Leading Light
When Michael Smuin, founder of Smuin Ballet (now known as Smuin), passed away unexpectedly in 2007, Celia Fushille, dancer and then associate director for the company, had but a few days to gather her thoughts.
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United
Feminism, queer theory, ontology, postcolonialism—these subjects and more cropped up in the whirlwind 90 minutes I recently spent interviewing Cecilia Lisa Eliceche ahead of the UK premiere of her latest work, “Unison.” The Argentine choreographer is an avid political activist and well versed in the academia behind the issues she’s drawn to, which range from wealth inequality to racism, sexism and international human rights abuse.
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The Little Prince
“You—you alone will have the stars as no one else has them . . .” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince in all its aphoristic wisdom will soon be on stage in the form of a ballet, to be performed by the National Ballet of Canada.
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Modern Muse
Complexions Contemporary Ballet, by virtue of its name, conjures graceful athleticism with the more formal rigors of ballet. Co-founded by Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson in 1994, the 15-member troupe is testament to sculpted lines and a hyperphysical aesthetic, one whose brand is instantly identifiable. Indeed, the Rhoden/Richardson partnership has not only built a company that tours the world, but has served as one of dance’s most illustrious creative pairings, with Richardson, still performing at 47, Rhoden’s muse.
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From the Ground Up
One might say that they’ve got ballet in their blood. Colleen Neary has been dancing since she was nine; her husband of nearly 30 years, Thordal Christensen, since he was six. This year, the co-directors of Los Angeles Ballet, founded in 2006, celebrate the troupe’s 10th season, a near-miraculous feat, really, in a town not known to be particularly pointe shoe-friendly.
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One Giant Leap
Do you recall seeing your first ballet? No, says Francesco Gabriele Frola, first soloist with the National Ballet of Canada, but he does recall the first one he was in. “Every time my mother danced “La fille mal gardée,” she was pregnant,” he says. With two brothers and a sister, “after four times, she had enough,” he laughs.
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Trio Concert Dance
After taking her final bows as Juliet at the Metropolitan Opera House with American Ballet Theater in June of 2007, Alessandra Ferri may have left the storied company she had danced with since 1985, but, as she said in a recent phone interview from her home in Manhattan, she certainly did not retire.
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In the Studio with Jerome Robbins
“Fiddler on the Roof” returned to Broadway this month, with London-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter maintaining most of the original steps but relaxing the dancers’ postures and loosening the dances’ spacing for an effect of chaotic feeling erupting at ritual moments that I suspect Robbins would have loved. In any case, it seemed like a good moment to reprint a short Newsday feature as well as uncut interviews with some of Robbins’ favorite dancers, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan and Damian Woetzel, conducted on the occasion of an exhilarating and comprehensive Robbins Celebration at New York City Ballet in 2008. All three of these brilliant...
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Dare to Dance
“I'm interested in the democratization of dance and theater, and redefining what constitutes a stage—both aesthetically and socially.” That’s Sarah Elgart speaking, a force of nature who has been at the forefront of dance in L.A. as a choreographer, director and producer for more than three decades. Still model-thin with blue eyes and long blonde hair, Elgart has not only engaged audiences with site-specific projects that have transformed bus terminals, airports and museums into veritable action paintings, but she’s also choreographed for film, commercials and television, working with high-profile directors that include Catherine Hardwicke, David Lynch and J. J. Abrams.
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Essential Moves
For his first New York City performance, Bronx-born Rudy Perez presented a program of dance solos. It was the mid-1960s, and the venue was one of those “alternative” spaces that sat about 50. As he began the concert, Perez says that he noticed there were only four people in the audience—and they were all sitting together.
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Art of Falling
With 24 dancers and six actors, “The Art of Falling,” a collaboration between Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and the improvisational comedy troupe, the Second City, is not only startlingly original, but, in a way, unclassifiable.
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Teenage Angst and Institutions
Watching Matthew Bourne's reworked version of the “star-cross'd lovers,” I was briefly reminded of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder, in the dark 1988 comedy by Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, Heathers, and her line, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Yes, this is the darker side of Bourne's repertoire,...
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The Me of Today
The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.
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Beneath blue California skies, manicured trees, and the occasional hum of an overhead airplane, Tamara Rojo took the Frost Amphitheater stage at Stanford University to introduce herself as the new artistic director of San Francisco Ballet.
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America, F**K Yeah
After a week of the well-balanced meal that is “Jewels”—the nutritive, potentially tedious, leafy greens of “Emeralds,” the gamy, carnivorous “Rubies,” and the decadent, shiny white mountains of meringue in “Diamonds”—the New York City Ballet continued its 75th Anniversary All-Balanchine Fall Season with rather more dyspeptic fare.
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Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup
An “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.
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