Category: dance

SO WHAT’S IN A NAME?

The famed Imperial Ballet of Russia finally made its North American debut this week in Toronto. Or did it? Well, something called the Imperial ballet showed up, but in name only. Like many Russian performing arts companies these days, the Imperial is little more than one of those Russian pick-up troupes of freelance dancers that spends most of its time touring the world and trading off the dwindling mystique of an appropriated name. – National Post (Canada)

YES, BUT WHAT DO YOU CALL IT?

Yolande Snaith  “is a choreographer, and because she works without stories or hit music or (often) words, she is still not widely known, and she is lucky if her work is performed in fringe venues. But she has always been more than a choreographer. She is a theatre poet, who uses scenery, costumes, props, music and dance to create her peculiar wonderlands.” – Financial Times

BEHIND BALLET

Dancer Natalia Makarova is working with San Francisco Ballet for the first time. “Is it all right to talk about the soul, do you think?” asks one of the most soulful ballerinas in the history of dance. “It is a cliche, so I don’t talk much about it. Instead, let’s talk about the spirit. Spirit means something in ballet, means everything in `La Bayadere.’ ” – San Francisco Chronicle

“MEAT PORTERS”

Ever since pointe shoes, male dancers have had little more to do than…well, move their more comely partners around the stage. But there are signs that choreographers are paying more attention to men these days. “Men who dance solo, it seems, are determined to use their bodies to express the kind of cogent thoughts on gender, sexuality, relationships, and the politics of society that have, in the wake of established feminism, been seen as another province where women take the lead, vocally and in terms of artistic creation.” – Glasgow Herald

NEW LOOK AT HIP HOP

Christiane Crawford belongs to the first generation that grew up on hip-hop and saw its progression from urban freestyle to suburban entertainment, and she is offering successive generations an outlet she never had. Last summer, Crawford and DJ Jessie Singer developed Body, a semi-monthly event merging urban, social, and performance dance into a kind of live update on the TV dance show “Soul Train.” – Dance Magazine

SACRED GROUND?

Frederick Ashton created his ballet “Marguerite and Armand” for Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, and wherever danced it, “people saw the love story not only of the courtesan Marguerite and the hopeful young Armand, but also (they fancied) of Margot and Rudi themselves.” The piece was so identified with the couple that when they gave their final performance of it in 1977 – when Fonteyn was 58 – it was unthinkable that anyone else could ever dance it. And now the Royal Ballet has announced a new production.  – London Telegraph

  • Nicolas Le Riche: Nureyev’s protégé, France’s best dancer and its best-kept secret, takes on “Armand” – London Sunday Times 02/27/00