Founder Cassa Pancho: “All through ballet school I was really aware of the lack of black people around me. So for my dissertation I thought I would interview black women working in ballet and see what they had to say – but I couldn’t find a single black woman working in ballet, and that really stunned me. When I graduated, I decided, very naively, to do something about it myself.”
Tag: 12.04.10
Alastair Macaulay Defends His Remarks About Ballerina’s Weight
“When a dancer has surplus weight, there can be no more ruthless way to demonstrate it than to dance in a tutu with shoulders bare. If Ms. Ringer performed flamenco or Bharatanatyam or most forms of contemporary dance, she would look extremely slim. In most of her recent ballet roles, she has actually looked slender. … This particular Sugar Plum Fairy – one of her rare tutu parts these days – was not one of them.”
How Digital Media Have Changed The Movie Experience
“Digital media have not only created a world starkly different from the world of a mere 15 years ago, they have changed the way people who live in the world think, behave, create and consume. They have facilitated a generation gap that makes the divide between Boomers and their parents narrow by comparison.”
English National Ballet – A Tightening Money Noose
“We could just cut five weeks of touring, but we’re funded to be a touring company, so we can’t have that. And we can’t reduce the dancer numbers, because all the productions we have are made for 60-plus dancers. We’d look like one of those rather crappy touring Russian companies, with horrible sets, an orchestra of 20 and students with stick-on moustaches.”
Child Molestation Charges Dropped Against Mikhail Pletnev
“An investigation into accusations of child molestation by one of the world’s leading classical musicians, Mikhail Pletnev, has been formally dropped without charges being pressed, the Russian National Orchestra (RNO) has confirmed.”
Rise Of The Art Mega-Galleries
“The rise and rise of the mega-gallery–intent on creating a global brand–has never been more obvious than this week at Art Basel Miami Beach. The fair’s floorplan is something of a blueprint for the increasingly hierarchical market.”
Steve Martin Explains What Really Happened At The 92nd Street Y
“It was hard to get on track, any track, after the note’s arrival, and finally, when I answered submitted questions that had been selected by the people in charge, I knew I would have rather died onstage with art talk than with the predictable questions that had been chosen for me.”