All – Tagged "INTERVIEWS" – Page 11

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INTERVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Moving Forward, Toward the Light

Even when Lauren Lovette was in the corps de ballet, standing somewhere on the side of the stage, somehow you just couldn’t miss her. Her eyes and face always seemed to find the light. The quality never left her, as she took on an increasing number and range of roles in ballets by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and, more recently, Alexei Ratmansky. Her performance of the dopey princess in Ratmansky’s “Namouna” was unforgettable, not just because of the go-for-broke quality of the dancing, but because of the imagination and personality one could sense behind every step. She seemed to be...

INTERVIEWS | By Marina Harss

West Side Story Dreams

I first spoke with Harrison Coll when I was writing a feature about young boys performing the role of Nutcracker Prince for the first time at New York City Ballet. Coll, then a member of the corps, had performed the part as a kid, and has since danced almost every role in that ballet, from Candy Cane to Cavalier, including hiding under Marie’s bed and wheeling it around the stage. One could say he grew up with New York City Ballet, starting at School of American Ballet at 7, before joining the company and rising to the role of soloist in 2018. He has become a particular...

INTERVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Megan Fairchild, the No-nonsense Ballerina

If ever there was a can-do dancer, it’s Megan Fairchild. At New York City Ballet, where she has been a principal dancer since 2005, she performs all the toughest ballets, the ones that are full of jumps, quick footwork, and pin-prick pointework. At a point in her career when most principals forego certain punishing roles like Dewdrop in “The Nutcracker”—all those jumps! so much speed!—she has no plans to take things easy on herself. In fact, when I caught up with her to talk about her new book The Ballerina Mindset (Penguin Life, December 2021), Fairchild was in the middle...

BOOKSHELF | INTERVIEWS | By Marina Harss

In his New Memoir, Center Center, James Whiteside Doesn’t Mince Words

If you’re wondering what James Whiteside, principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, did last year during the pandemic, here’s the answer: he wrote a book. How does that make you feel about your own productivity? Well, Whiteside isn’t one to waste time. His new book, which goes on sale in August, is a memoir, with the very clever title Center Center. Center center, in Whiteside’s words, is the name for “a mark on every stage around the world that signifies the center of its depth and width.” This, naturally, is where he aimed to be from a very young age....

INTERVIEWS | By Valentina Bonelli

Happy Days

Alessandra Ferri celebrates her 40-year long career with a revival of “L’Heure Exquise,” which premiered at the Ravenna Festival, at Alighieri Theatre in June. Maurice Béjart first staged his own version of Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days for Carla Fracci and Micha van Hoecke in 1998, and the performance is studded with references and full of memories, both personal and artistic, which the Italian étoile is enthusiastic to recall. This revival is also the occasion for Alessandra Ferri to bring back to life a lively character, Winnie, the last one in her gallery of beloved heroines: Juliet, Manon, Carmen, Blanche,...

BOOKSHELF | INTERVIEWS | By Marina Harss

A Life in Dance

Gavin Larsen was a professional dancer for eighteen years, first with Pacific Northwest Ballet, then with Alberta Ballet and Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and finally and most significantly, for Oregon Ballet Theatre. She was never famous, but she had a good career, a career any dancer can be proud of. She has just written a memoir, Being a Ballerina, the Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life, published by the University Press of Florida. It is a quietly engrossing book, the reading of which feels like peeking through the keyhole into a life in dance. It is not a life to be...

INTERVIEWS | By Josephine Minhinnett

Vision of Change

Toronto-based choreographer and dancemaker Esie Mensah says that she likes to “poke people with her art.” You’ll know what she means if you’ve seen any of her previous creations, such as A Revolution of Love, in which a crew of Black female dancers take over Fort York National Historic Site in celebratory Afro-fusion movement.

INTERVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Duke Dang Leads Works & Process through the Storm

For fifteen years, Duke Dang has been the bright, capable force behind Works & Process, a series that offers behind-the-scenes conversations about the creative process. Regularly, choreographers, composers, and designers have converged upon the postage-stamp-sized theater beneath the Guggenheim Museum to discuss their work and to show sneak peeks of premieres.[1]

DANCE FILM | INTERVIEWS | By Veronica Posth

Belinda McGuire: Choose Your Own Adventure

Belinda McGuire is a dance artist who splits her time between her native Toronto and Brooklyn. As a teen she danced with Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, before going on to build a career as an independent dance artist. A creative force, Belinda has produced and launched several one-woman shows, and performed as a company member with Doug Varone and Dancers, Gallim Dance, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Anne Plamondon, and Joshua Beamish's MoveTheCompany.

INTERVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Taylor Stanley: The Space to Think

Like all the dancers at New York City Ballet, Taylor Stanley has been away from the company’s studios for much of the last year. Most of that time, he’s been in New York, where he lives with his sweet dog, Theo. The break has given him time to reflect, but that’s nothing new. Stanley is as thoughtful offstage as he is internal onstage. He dances as if he were digging toward some very deep and quiet place within. For a few years, he has been exploring different ways of moving, outside of ballet. He’s attracted to Ohad Naharin’s Gaga technique,...

INTERVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Rise from the Ashes

Penny Chivas is a superb Glasgow-based dancer and activist whose work is graceful, insightful and challenging. Her current project, “Burnt Out,” interrogates the effects of Australian bush fires, with particular emphasis on trauma, in terms of both body and the environment. Plans for the piece were put on hiatus because of travel restrictions in the wake of the pandemic. Lorna Irvine caught up with her—socially distanced, outdoors—to talk with her about her career so far, and plans for when current restrictions are lifted in the UK.

INTERVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Toni Basil, Dancing through the Decades

Quentin Tarantino called her the “Goddess of Go-Go.” Indeed, when the acclaimed director hired dancer, choreographer, singer, and actress Toni Basil to make dances for his 2019 film, Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, choosing Basil was a no-brainer. After all, this polymath, who was born in 1943 and is still going strong at 77, not only has cred in the swinging ‘60s, but has also been relevant for six—count ‘em, yes six—decades.

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Lorna Irvine

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,...

INTERVIEWS | Marina Harss

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.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

Starry Nights

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.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

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.

REVIEWS | Emily May

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.