All – Tagged "INTERVIEWS" – Page 6

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Rethinking the Broadway Body

Broadway Bodies is dedicated to “anyone who has ever been told they were too fat, too short, too gay, too disabled, and otherwise too much or not enough to be in a musical.” The book, written by musical theater scholar Ryan Donovan, examines the ways different aspects of identity have historically affected casting on the Great White Way, using shows like A Chorus Line, Dreamgirls, and La Cage aux Folles as case studies to illustrate the issues that arise when bodies are used as an artistic medium.

INTERVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

A New Vision with Melissa Barak

It’s been a good year for women leading ballet companies: In the recent past, Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell took the reins at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; Tamara Rojo became the first female artistic director of San Francisco Ballet in the troupe’s 89-year history; and Jodie Gates is leading Cincinnati Ballet into a new era.

INTERVIEWS | By Marina Harss

A Quiet Presence

When Jared Angle retired from New York City Ballet this past January after a twenty-five year career with the company, he did so in a characteristically understated manner. He danced in only one of the three ballets on the program, playing Prince Ivan in Balanchine’s “Firebird.” Afterward, he received only a modest number of bouquets, having requested that the money be spent, instead, on New York City Ballet’s Education and Public Programs. He then said a few words, thanking the audience for coming to the ballet, his colleagues for their years of friendship, and the orchestra for their music. There...

INTERVIEWS | By Veronica Posth

Dancing in the Rain with Boris Charmatz

In an extended phone interview, I had the pleasure of posing question after question to Boris Charmatz. He told me about his various projects as dancer and choreographer, starting with association EDNA, the Musée de la Danse and finishing with his artistic direction, as of September 2022, of the world-renowned Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

BOOKSHELF | INTERVIEWS | By Sophie Bress

What Ballet Leaves Behind

In her latest book, Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet author Alice Robb calls New York City Ballet co-founder George Balanchine her “problematic fave.” Especially as the dance world continues to examine many of the darker aspects of the famed choreographer’s influence on ballet culture, this is a sentiment that many of us—myself included—seem to be echoing.

INTERVIEWS | By Rachael Moloney

Tiler Peck, Creative Spirit

New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck is many things beyond ballerina. Although it’s a role she excels in—she is widely acclaimed for her immaculate technique, speed, and musicality —Peck has always sought more from her career in dance. Schooled from an early age in various genres, including jazz, she made her Broadway debut at age 11, appearing as Gracie Shinn in “The Music Man.” Other musical theatre roles followed, but after seeing a performance of “The Nutcracker” in New York, Peck set her heart on pursuing her ballet training. She entered the School of American Ballet when she...

INTERVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Jodie Gates, Changemaker

She’s been a principal ballerina in companies that include the Joffrey Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet and Complexions Contemporary Ballet, as well as a principal guest artist with companies around the world such as the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia. From 2006-2013, she was a tenured professor of dance at UC Irvine, and in 2013 she was named the first Vice Dean and Director of the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. In addition, in 2006, she was the founder and artistic director of the Laguna Dance Festival. But Jodie Gates has never been an artistic director of a dance troupe—until...

INTERVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

Banishing Orientalism

Phil Chan wants to get one thing straight: his work is the opposite of cancel culture. As co-founder of the organization Final Bow for Yellowface, Chan has long called for updating the obsolete stage representations of Asians and has even encouraged arts leaders to sign a pledge committing to the elimination of these damaging stereotypes. It is an advocacy he pursues in writing, teaching, consulting, directing, and choreographing.

INTERVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Simone Forti: Fortissimo

“It was packed and I was surprised at the kind of adoration I received. But it seemed like people were responding to the work and it felt good. It [also] scared me a little bit.”

INTERVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Tamara Rojo leads San Francisco Ballet

On January 19th, San Francisco Ballet opens its 90th season—its first under new artistic director, Tamara Rojo. Rojo is new to many San Francisco dance viewers but a near-household name to ballet fans in Europe, where she began her dancing career with the English National Ballet, ascended to stardom at the Royal Ballet, and then returned to ENB in 2012 to serve as both artistic director and principal dancer, raising the company’s profile from a regional touring troupe to an international newsmaker, particularly by prioritizing women’s choreographic voices and by commissioning Akram Khan to radically reinvent the Romantic era staple...

INTERVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Dancing All Over Town with Heidi Duckler

The reigning goddess of Southern California site-specific dance, the indefatigable Heidi Duckler, began her terpsichorean journey in 1985 in Los Angeles. Originally dubbed Collage Dance Theatre, the troupe, now Heidi Duckler Dance (HDD), began its storied history in, well, a laundromat. That work, “Laundromatinee,” originally staged in 1988 in Santa Monica’s Thrifty Wash Laundromat, featured dancers performing amid washing machines, dryers and a bevy of onlookers, intentional or not.

BOOKSHELF | INTERVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Why Dance Matters

Mindy Aloff’s new book Why Dance Matters is part of a series, published by Yale University Press, on why this or that thing should matter to the reader. The series has already taken on such subjects as architecture, translation, poetry, and acting. And as of next January, it will include Aloff’s meditation on the many ways dance enters and alters our lives. At different points in her career, Aloff has been a poet, a dance critic, an essayist, a teacher, the editor of the anthology Dance in America, and the author of Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation....

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.