Category: dance

Every two years the Canadian Dance Festival gathers up the best in Canadian dance and puts it on display in once place. – Toronto Globe and Mail

The great Kirov Ballet has put on its detective hat to recreate the long-lost original “Sleeping Beauty.” “We will see almost every step as Tsar Alexander III saw it in 1890, almost every detail that the brilliant Marius Petipa choreographed to Tchaikovsky’s extraordinary music, and every design as the ballet’s ambitious originator, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, drew it.” – The Telegraph (London)

The English National Ballet is underfunded, says its director. So he puts on a show, the critics be damned. “On our Australian tour of Swan Lake last year, our smallest audience a night was 7,800 and our largest was 11,000 – 11,000 Australians, sporty people, who stood on their feet and roared. When I’m looking at that, I don’t care what anybody says. If the productions were naff, the dancing substandard, the costumes tacky, I’d mind. But this is the highest quality you can find.” – The Sunday Times (London)

For nearly the last 15 years of his ballet career, Rudolf Nureyev “did everything possible to destroy his reputation, dancing too often, too badly, eventually too unwatchably to be anything more than classical ballet’s grimmest joke. And yet, surprisingly, almost impossibly, his artistic rehabilitation is now in full swing, fed by new evidence that, if not the greatest dancer of our era, he may well have been the most original and influential.” – Los Angeles Times

The demise of the Szeged National Theater’s internationally acclaimed contemporary ballet ensemble has fueled concerns over the future of the arts in Hungary. – Budapest Sun

Sizing up the search for a new artistic director for Boston Ballet. – Boston Herald

Since Australian Ballet artistic director Ross Stretton announced his departure, the company has been accepting applications to fill his place. Two hopeful in-house candidates have already turned in their CV’s: one, a principal dancer, and the other, the ballet master. – Sydney Morning Herald

Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet (formerly the Kirov) has a new star. “Because of her, the Mariinsky is suddenly hot again. It’s the Russian equivalent of a new home-run hitter lighting up Yankee Stadium or a fresh tenor conquering La Scala.” – Washington Post

Dance Connecticut, the one-year-old company founded out of the ashes of Hartford Ballet, surprises everyone and announces it will take a year off. The company – which had a well-received first season – will use the year to plan for the future, organizers say. – Hartford Courant