Category: dance

The fired-then-reinstated New York City Ballet principal was a figure in the company’s recent #MeToo scandal (and accompanying lawsuit). While City Ballet’s dancers and the company of West Side Story seem willing (at least publicly) to let Ramasar redeem himself, a number of others — including lawsuit plaintiff Alexandra Waterbury — are calling on audience members to boo him until the producers fire him from the show. – The Guardian

“There’s a massive hole,” producer Lyndsay Magid Aviner said of the lack of urban dance on New York stages. Coming from the circus world, the Aviners said they believe there’s a broad audience for physical storytelling. Justin Peck’s popular 2017 work “The Times Are Racing” for New York City Ballet, danced in sneakers, convinced them that audiences would embrace the kind of work the Madrids are doing. Taking a cue from movement-based hits like “Blue Man Group,” “Stomp” and “Fuerza Bruta,” the Aviners went the for-profit route. They said they raised $200,000 for the San Diego run, then held their breath. – The New York Times

“Rianto, is a master of the Lengger Lanang, a traditional [Javanese] dance performed by men dressed as women. But Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, has seen rising intolerance in recent years towards the LBGT community. And there are fears it could affect this traditional art form.” (video) – BBC

The sessions, attended by leaders from New York City Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, and Charlotte Ballet, were held in conjunction with this past weekend’s conference of the International Association of Blacks in Dance. Reporter Ellen Dunkel sat in. – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Studying how people move to music is a powerful tool for researchers looking to understand how and why music affects us the way it does. Over the last few years, researchers at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland have used motion capture technology—the same kind used in Hollywood—to learn that your dance moves say a lot about you, such as how extroverted or neurotic you are, what mood you happen to be in, and even how much you empathize with other people. – Phys.org

Marinela Nuñez: “When I’m dancing, I always think – even when I am in a fairytale ballet such as The Sleeping Beauty – that it is real. It touches me and it makes me think of my life; it should have that impact when you’re watching. Some people always say that ballet is elitist and it’s definitely not. It is this beautiful piece of art, unfolding live in front of you, not like something in a museum.” – The Observer (UK)

It’s the annual conference of the International Association of Blacks in Dance, which was started 32 years ago by Philadanco founder-director Joan Roberts Brown. “In the mid-1980s, she started cold-calling every dance company she could identify with the word ‘Black’ in its title, to see if they were interested in getting together to talk about the challenges they faced running African-American dance companies. ‘I thought it would be six ladies in my kitchen,’ said Brown. ‘Sixty people showed up.'” This year’s attendance figure: 1,100. – WHYY (Philadelphia)

“‘He has coherently brought classical African dance into conversation with all that is contemporary,’ said [South African dance scholar] Jay Pather, … long-established practices of Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho people, ‘rituals and codes that are highly complex and have been passed on in highly sophisticated ways.’ Mr. Maqoma, who is of Xhosa descent, doesn’t deconstruct these rituals and codes. He uses them to tell contemporary stories.” – The New York Times

Virginia Johnson, a founding member of Dance Theater of Harlem who was named artistic director in 2009, said the gift would go toward increasing the size of the company from 18 to 20 dancers, supplementing the organization’s lean staff and further encouraging the development of works by women and people of color. – The New York Times

When the choreographer and her company debuted Bluebeard. While Listening to a Tape Recording of Béla Bartók’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle”, audiences who’d never seen anything like it did not respond well, but the mixture of dance, spoken theater, stop-and-start music, and male-on-female violence became emblematic of Bausch’s style. But Bluebeard had been out of the repertory since 1994, and with Bausch having died a decade ago, no one was sure it could be revived. Brian Seibert reports on how the work was reconstructed. – The New York Times