Category: dance

Same-Gender Couples Come To The Once-Rigidly Male-Female World Of Competitive Ballroom Dance

“Traditional ballroom dancing enacts a caricature of socially prescribed gender roles. The male partner is the leader; the female partner, the follower. The male partner’s movements are meant to be sharp and decisive, while the female dancer is meant to be flowy and expressive. … Same-gender ballroom dancing challenges these norms while also challenging the dancers themselves, who often learn to both lead and follow.” – The Washington Post

Ballet BC’s Emily Molnar Named Nederlands Dans Theater’s Artistic Director

When Molnar took over the [Vancouver-based] company in 2009, it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Since then she’s brought in big-name contemporary choreographers and built up” Ballet BC’s quality and reputation to the point that they now tour internationally. She begins her job at NDT, one of Europe’s leading contemporary dance troupes, in August 2020. – The Georgia Straight (Vancouver)

The U.S. Has A Vibrant, Innovative Flamenco Scene — Why Is It Continually Underrated? (Especially When A Dancer Has A Non-Spanish Name)

Alice Blumenfeld, alumna of Flamenco Vivo and now director of the company ABREPASO: “Only as I started to branch out did I realize there are many people breaking boundaries in flamenco in the U.S. in incredible ways that could only be possible in the melting pot that is America.” – Dance Magazine

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa On The Challenge Of Creating New Story Ballets

“It’s actually very hard to keep the audience engaged in the development of a story. The struggle is figuring out how literal I can be, and how much I can use the abstract aesthetic of dance to enhance an emotion as opposed to just tell the story. … Storytelling is where ballet started, and then contemporary dance took over and it was all about movement and space and music. I want to revive it, and not feel it has to be an old-fashioned form.” – Pointe Magazine

Mark Morris Directs His First Non-Dance Theatre — Beckett, No Less

The choreographer is directing three plays — Come and Go, Catastrophe, and Quad (a pure-movement piece which Morris likens to Lucinda Childs) — for this month’s Happy Days festival in the Northern Irish town of Enniskillen (where Beckett went to boarding school). “The timing is actually much harder than it looks; the point isn’t virtuosity, it’s expertise,” says Morris. “… And I am all about timing.” – The New York Times

Why David McAllister Stepped Down From Running Australian Ballet

Having presided over the company’s 40th and 50th anniversaries, he was looking ahead to the 60th anniversary and planning what he could do that would “be new and different”, he explains. “And I just sort of went — you know what? Maybe it’s actually the time for a new person to have the opportunity – a new director, new vision.” – Dance Australia

Alvin Ailey Company’s Second-In-Command To Step Down

“Masazumi Chaya, the associate artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater since 1991, will retire on Jan. 5, 2020, after the company’s annual City Center season. But he’ll still be involved with the organization: After he steps down, Mr. Chaya, 72, will be in charge of a licensing project that will assist in the restaging of Ailey’s works.” – The New York Times