Category: dance

“I think what appeared after in newspapers and magazines can’t be justified by what I said online … It was a weird, interesting experience and it felt like there was a certain karma that I had to go through. But actually I felt free after, free to dance.” (He also says that he thinks Rasputin “meant well.”) – BBC

For the retiring dancer, who’s about to become executive director of Festival Ballet Providence, it was a definite choice: she got a degree and interned in Boston Ballet’s administrative offices when not dancing. “As much as I love being in the studio, I knew that after I stopped dancing, I didn’t want to continue that rigorous in-the-studio lifestyle. … I became very interested in what the art form could offer as a whole, rather than just personally what I could offer as an artist.” – Dance Magazine

“Ballet might have been considered camp from the start in its original French context,” allows Madison Mainwaring. (But then, so could most things at Louis XIV’s Versailles.) “If there is a camp essence in [today’s] Romantic style of ballet, with its jeweled costumes and feathered headdresses, it is related to the worship of a style that is no longer of its time.” – The New York Times

This decade has been pretty rough for the company, which lost its home to mold, cycled through executive directors at an alarming rate, and nearly closed for good in 2015. Now Orlando Ballet’s in the black, audiences are up 40% in two years, its shows are hits, and its new HQ is being built. – Orlando Sentinel

What’s particularly frustrating for international festival presenters is the idea of treating artists like immigrants and that they are not seen as the economic motors they are. After all, these people are not taking jobs; they’re coming for a limited amount of time and have no history of being dangerous.  – San Francisco Classical Voice

Sarah Kaufman: “The subtlety, intelligence and beauty of Federer’s play can pull us into a direct and instant involvement with grace. We experience a dimension of humanness that feels perfected and free, even close to divine. Great artists can do this to us.” – The Washington Post

Batsheva Dance Company’s Ohad Naharin told Army Radio, “BDS is against the occupation, something I sympathize with. I’ve always said that if protesting and boycotting my performances would improve the situation in the territories or bring a solution to the conflict, I would support the boycott myself.” There were prompt calls from some members of the public for Naharin to be stripped of all previous honors and for state funding of his work to be withdrawn. – Haaretz (Israel)

“What if all ballet dancers had agents and ballet companies had scouts? What if once a year there was a ballet combine, at which pre-professional dancers and ‘free agents’ could showcase their skills and be assessed by ballet companies across America like in a centralized audition?” – Dance Magazine

He joined the company in 1983 and grew to become one of its stars, and in 2001 he became the boss. When he departs in 2020, McAllister will have been the longest-serving artistic director in the Australian Ballet’s history. – The Age (Melbourne)

Gia Kourlas got Tharp and Sara Rudner, who danced in the work’s 1979 premiere, together with Misty Copeland and Isabella Boylston, who are performing in ABT’s upcoming revival. “It was lively … but certain points became clear: How important is it to work with the artist who actually created a ballet? Very. And how scary is it to step into the roles of two of the finest dancers of their generation, classical or otherwise? Ditto.” – The New York Times