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ABT 's pitch to the young

Adweek on ABT's advertising campaign aimed at a younger audience. "Four black-and-white print executions feature ABT dancers in period costumes sitting on scaffolding as well as close-ups of elegantly outstretched arms, a male dancer's athletic torso and a bare-backed ballerina cradling her bosom while dancing on point. The accompanying copy attempts to underscore the dramatic photography as well as the ballet's storytelling. One ad states, "A step of this foot leaves two lovers dead." Another execution says, "A twist of these hands will poison heaven." The tagline: "Welcome to the American Ballet Theatre's spring season. ABT. It moves you."
ADweek

Royal New Zealand Ballet
Tasmanian festival passion
Melting Moments, FrENZy, Milagros, Paquita Variations
Australia, Launceston, Theatre not named
Dancers: Wright, Chadwick
by Lee Christofis
    "Milagros memorialises Vaslav Nijinksy's shocking 1913 ballet to Stravinsky's revolutionary score, and quotes from his sister Bronislava Nijinska's Les Noces (1926), a pyramid of women with the "sacrificial" bride's head on top. But Milagros flows eloquently from Javier de Frutos's own history in deep, hypnotic ways."
The Australian

Hugh MacDiarmid

Hundreds of lost poems by one of Scotland's most renowned writers have been unearthed in the National Library of Scotland, according to the BBC. The collection of unknown works by Hugh MacDiarmid was found by a researcher. "The works include one nine-page poem on the subject of ballet as the revolutionary art of the future."
BBC News

Adam Cooper

Adam Cooper is rehearsing Jeux with Scottish Ballet, the occasion for an interview with the Glasgow Herald. "Cooper is beginning to pull together what might, one day, become the Adam Cooper Company. He'd mentioned, that he'd performed Darrell's Othello at a recent Exeter Festival. It transpires he also staged one of Kenneth MacMillan's rarely seen works, Sea of Troubles, there, and in America. "We took part in the 2003 Washington International Ballet Festival," he tells me. "We did a week there. My company," he breaks off and explains he doesn't have a company yet."
The Herald

Paul Taylor Dance Company
Taylor's 'Fire' forges a stirring vision
Promethean Fire
USA, Washington, Kennedy Center, Eisenhower Theater
Dancers: Corbin, Viola
by Jean Battey Lewis
    "Promethean Fire." is a work of great formal power and brilliance, but even more important, it achieves a deep emotional resonance."
Washington Times

Royal Ballet
Nureyev tribute
Nureyev bill: Apollo, Raymonda act III, Memory, La Sylphide pdd, Images of Love, Surge
UK, London, Sadler's Wells
Dancers: Acosta, Bolle, Bussell, Cope, Hilaire, Kobborg, Kumakawa
by Judith Mackrell
    "Johan Kobborg can hardly be bettered in La Sylphide - Bournonville is his native language and he handles it like a poet - but it is good to see Ivan Putrov in this role too. A dancer prone to over-serious display, he lets loose his huge, bounding jump with unexpected grace."
The Guardian This is not Mackrell's substantive review - that appeared earlier in the week.

Today's NY Times carries an obituary. "Whether Ms. Zorina insisted that Goldwyn hire Balanchine for "The Goldwyn Follies," or whether Goldwyn brought them together, the collaboration ended in Ms. Zorina's marriage to Balanchine in December 1938. By all accounts, it was an unhappy union. Mostly, it embodied an experiment that integrated high art into popular culture. Ms. Zorina's films, in which she often played a dancer, did much to introduce audiences to ballet as an art form, one that was witty and contemporary."
NY Times

Pacific Northwest Ballet
PNB dancers stand out in works old and new
Amazed in Burning Dreams, Souvenirs, Zais
USA, Seattle, Mercer Arts Arena
Dancers: Barker, Imler, Maraval, Pantastico, Porretta, Stanton, Wevers
by Rm Campbell
    "Stowell's work as a dancer was known for its easy virtuosity, bold exuberance and edgy intelligence. It's possible his choreography will possess some of the same attributes. "Zais" is clearly ambitious for a choreographer with little experience."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Perm State Ballet
'Beauty' gives a sleepy performance
Sleeping Beauty
USA, San Francisco, Flint Center, Cupertino
Dancers: Machkina, Moiseeva, Poleshuk
by Octavio Roca
    "Provincial ballet, for all its undeniably pretty touches, can get a little boring. And somewhere into the third hour of this provincial "Sleeping Beauty," the sensitive conducting and occasionally happy choreographic touches as well as Moiseeva and Machkina's dancing, began to matter less and less."
San Francisco Chronicle

Royal Ballet
Rudolf remembered... but Nureyev wouldn't have thanked them for this lacklustre homage
Nureyev bill: Apollo, Raymonda act III, Memory, La Sylphide pdd, Images of Love, Surge
UK, London, Covent Garden
Dancers: Cojocaru, Guillem, Hilaire, Kobborg
by Jann Parry
    "Guillem's film homage to Nureyev, directed by Françoise Ha Van Kern, is misconceived and... sabotages the performers. The clips make it impossible to concentrate on what the live figures are doing, but also to dissociate the ghosts of Nureyev and Fonteyn from the inapposite music to which they appear to be dancing."
The Observer

Royal Ballet
Can you have too much Nureyev? Yes, in the Royal Ballet’s tribute.
Nureyev bill: Apollo, Raymonda act III, Memory, La Sylphide pdd, Images of Love, Surge
UK, London, Covent Garden
Dancers: Bussell, Cojocaru, Guillem, Hilaire, Kobborg, Kumakawa, Morera, Nunez, Putrov, Rojo, Watson
by David Dougill
    "This conceptual celebration has turned out rather a problematical event...the concept does not translate into practice. Only by “framing” the onstage dancers with opera glasses, if you have them, can you follow their performances — but then you miss the films."
The Sunday Times

English National Ballet
Tour de Force: Trapeze, 2 Human, Facing Viv, Manoeuvre
UK, London, Sadler's Wells
Dancers: Edur, McIlroy, Oaks, Wikstrom
by Jann Parry
    "Wayne McGregor's duet, 2 Human , for Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur, is not so much a circus turn as a major marital spat. There's a wild beauty in their wranglings, with love the glue that holds them together."
The Observer

English National Ballet
Tour de Force: Trapeze, 2 Human, Facing Viv, Manoeuvre
UK, London, Sadler's Wells
Dancers: Edur, McIlroy, Oaks, Wikstrom
by David Dougill
    "'Trapeze' has a kind of “plot” in permutations of not entirely scrutable relationships between two couples and is packed with steps, but feels too episodic, not satisfyingly cogent."
The Sunday Times

Arc Dance Company
Hamlet
UK, Cambridge, Arts Theatre
by Jann Parry
    "This is Brandstrup's most coherent production in years. He keeps the storyline clear, while adding teasing layers of ambiguity through body language alone."
The Observer

Mixed Bills and Smaller Companies

Jack Anderson writes in the NY Times: "Mixed bills may keep dancers happy, too. A young dancer may dream of being the Swan Queen in "Swan Lake." But how many dancers in any company of any size ever actually portray the Swan Queen in any given season? More often, while the lucky few get the plum roles in a multiact classic, everyone else in a company may be spending time in the ensemble. In contrast, mixed bills can artistically challenge dancers."
NY Times

Crutches and Choreography

Bill Shannon was the extraordinary dancer/skateboarder on crutches, featured in Deborah Bull's series The Dancer's Body. He is profiled in today's NY Times: "Watching him skateboard around Union Square recently — slaloming through traffic, body bobbing, earphones blasting, using his crutches like oars — one better understood the improvisatory nature of his dance making. He danced, or, as he put it, "sessioned" up and down the steps along 14th Street and improvised, or "ciphered," inside a circle of onlookers. He took cues from passersby or a flock of pigeons or even a breeze."
NY Times

Ohio Ballet

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Ohio Ballet is shrinking. And so is its audience. Once a company of more than 20 dancers, the ensemble has been reduced to 12. Once a beloved cultural jewel with a subscription base of about 3,500 patrons, it now has a total of 848 subscribers in Cleveland and Akron."
Plain Dealer

From the Akron Beacon Journal: "The company is featuring a racy, violent production of The Rite of Spring that contains the warning: ``This powerful and disquieting ballet is intended for mature audiences.''It doesn't add up, but younger audiences shouldn't worry. They won't miss much by skipping Salvatore Aiello's dreadful production.
Beacon Journal

Boston's 'Moving Laboratory

From the Boston Post:
"Melinda Allen hopes that the Moving Laboratory can be a proving ground, reconciling the divergent demands of developing promising artists and training choreographers to run ''a business otherwise known as a dance company.'' To that end, the lab has been designed to take from the business world methods that provide stability while maintaining artistic integrity within the choreography the members produce."

Dance on the BBC

Fiona Morris, the BBC executive producer, who is responsible for all dance outside London seen on the network, has accused programme makers of relegating music and dance to the "high art arena" and has called for a more innovative approach to give arts programming mass appeal. ""As arts programme makers, we often tend to ignore how appropriate and immediate a connection we can make if we collaborate with dancers, singers, choreographers, composers and other performance artists in producing mainstream television programmes."
Media Guardian website

Akram Khan
Akram Khan
Ronin
UK, London, Purcell Room
Dancers: Khan
by Judith Mackrell
"When Kathak is performed by a dancer as gifted as Khan, sight is inseparable from sound. While some dances tend to ride on the pulse of their accompanying music, and others follow its melodic line, Kathak etches its poetry out of rhythm."
The Guardian

Akram Khan
Akram Khan
Ronin
UK, London, Purcell Room
Dancers: Khan
by Donald Hutera
"Khan makes kathak sexy, not in any obvious or overt way. Rather, the appeal lies in his intense focus and exquisitely timed expressivity."
The Times

NDT2
Youthful artists come of age
Six Dances, Dream Play, Minus 16
USA, Los Angeles, Royce Hall, UCLA
by Lewis Segal
    "Like much European dance of its time, Six Dances can be seen as a statement about the lost primacy of European culture, but also as one that greets that loss with a sense of relief. NDT2, however, left no time for analysis on Saturday with its forceful, detailed, high-velocity performance."
Los Angeles Times

London Children's Ballet

From BBC News: "Matthew and Oliver Edwardson,15, of Cottenham, Cambridge, will take the lead roles in the Prince and the Pauper put on by the London Children's Ballet next month. The teenagers have been dancing since they were eight, and have both won places at London's Royal Ballet Upper School. Denise Rhind of the London Children's Ballet said the company had put on a production featuring twin girls before, but never boys."
BBC News
Ballet.co postings

Sarah Michelson
Choreography That May or May Not Include a Cab
Shadowmann Part 2
USA, New York, P.S. 122
Dancers: Michelson
by Jennifer Dunning
    "The great pleasures of "Shadowmann" are Ms. Michelson's imagination and her authoritative staging."
The New York Times

English National Ballet
Tour de Force, Sadler's Wells, London
Tour de Force: Trapeze, 2 Human, Facing Viv, Manoeuvre
UK, London, Sadler's Wells
Dancers: Edur, Oaks
by Jenny Gilbert
    "In Wayne McGregor's 2 Human ENB has itself a showstopper. Hard to tell whether it was McGregor's extraordinarily detailed and polyglot dance language that made it so gripping, or the fizzing performances by Thomas Edur and a transformed Agnes Oaks, the Estonian ice-queen turned foxy lady in a puff of black ostrich fluff."
Sunday Independent

Twyla Tharp
A Night Informed by Tharp
Westerly Round, Even the King, Surfer at the River Styx
USA, Greenvale, Tilles Center for the Performing Arts
Dancers: Coates, Dibble, McDole, Neshyba-Hodges, Sing, Vacarro
by Sylviane Gold
    "In "Even the King," the competition lost its playground flavor and got serious. Toe-shoes serious. The four men contended for the favor of Coates and Sing. Dibble, an elegant import from the Royal Ballet, was the central figure, abandoned with only his reverie at the end."
Newsday

Vera Zorina 1917-2003

From the Independent's obituary: "Zorina and Balanchine's marriage was reputedly a stormy one – the choreographer was noted for the attachments he would form for some of his star ballerinas – and they divorced in 1946. The couple continued to be devoted to one another, though each of them married others. Zorina's book indicates that he was the love of her life, and she was at his bedside as he was dying."
The Independent

Akram Khan
Grace turns ferocious
Ronin
UK, London, Purcell Room
Dancers: Khan
by Zoe Anderson
    "It's different each time, the focus endlessly renewed within a single phrase. This is dancing on a heroic scale, tremendous in its range and power."
Daily Telegraph

Sleeping Beauty

Janet Street-Porter (for it is she) on the Royal Ballet's Sleeping Beauty. "Am I alone in finding this production as dreary as they come? The costumes, sets and much of the choreography are fussy and dated. Quite simply you could be looking at something staged any time since the mid 1950s. There are moments when the dancers are asked to perform such banal theatrics you just want to weep."
The Independent

Vera Zorina 1917-2003

From the the Telegraph's obituary. "She learned Russian and had an affair with the dancer André Églevsky, but her first great love was Massine - she described an open ménage à trois, when she was 18, with him and his wife Eugenia Delarova."
The Telegraph

James Sewell Ballet
Balletic Sonnets, Surprises Included
Opus 131, Lover, Improvisation No. 46
USA, New York, Whitman Hall
Dancers: Freeh, Johnson, Keefe, Leaf, Rousse, Seipp, Welsh
by Anna Kisselgoff
    "Mr. Sewell is one of American ballet's best choreographers, albeit one who composes sonnets rather than epics. This lack of pretension can make his work look deceptively gentle, but it is not modest."
The New York Times

Chunky Moves

From The Age: "Humour was an unlikely byproduct of Gideon Obarzanek's Australia's Most Wanted: Ballet for a Contemporary Democracy, which Chunky Move premiered last year. But audiences have been laughing: some thought the dance steps were hilarious."
The Age

Nunsense

From the St Petersburg Times (Florida): "The strong cast, headed by Dee Etta Rowe as Sister Mary Regina, the convent chief, charms as much as it entertains, with the nuns gaily, but incongruously tap dancing (Tackle That Temptation with a Time Step), singing ribald songs (listen closely to the lyrics of Difficult Transition) and telling insider Catholic jokes (the Mother Superior's intimidating clicker), to name a few. Becca McCoy makes a strong Sister Robert Anne, the convent tomboy with a tender spiritual side. Chelle St. Pierre is a winsome novice, Sister Mary Leo, who longs to use her ballet as a way to worship."
St Petersburg Times

Dance Connections
Consider the pointe well made
Jeux, Acrid Avid Jam
UK, Glasgow, Theatre Royal
Dancers: Cao, Cavallari, Cooper, Harrison, Hines, Panchenko, Sakuma, Seabra, White
by Mary Brennan
    "Though the full company is still under wraps prior to a re-launch, artistic director Ashley Page dangled a tantalising carrot before an audience full of curious Scottish Ballet followers. Acrid Avid Jam (2001) was a coolly cunning duet to modern backbeats by Aphex Twin."
The Herald

Theatre de Complicite
Donald Hutera in The Times reviews Complicite’s ‘Arlecchino’ at the BAC:
“…Magni turned a hirsute man in the front row into a bellowing bull. If he had less success converting a woman into a chicken, he managed to make us believe she’d laid an egg (which he swallowed raw)”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,685-648361,00.html
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Dance in New York
Deborah Jowitt in the Village Voice reviews Boris Eifman, Douglas Dunn and Ria Jaroslow.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0316/jowitt.php

Ivy Baldwin
Pieces Awash in Originality, Sometimes on the Edge
To Tears in a Bucket, Belly Polling, Sympathy for the Audience, Ekubo Theater
USA, New York, Joyce SoHo
Dancers: Baldwin, Davies, Griggs, Schickler, Smith. Uzzi, Woitel
by Jennifer Dunning
    "Ivy Baldwin has a wild imagination..... Her new "To Tears in a Bucket," performed by her company on Saturday night at Joyce SoHo, became almost unbearable to watch and hear. But it was original and promising"
The New York Times

The Golden Mask awards
John Freedman in the English-language Moscow Times reports on the Gold Mask awards ceremony in St. Petersburg (which was invaded by a troupe of tiresome-sounding clowns): “Ilza Liyepa took best female dancer for her work in the Bolshoi's "The Queen of Spades," while her partner Nikolai Tsiskaridze won best male dancer.”
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2003/04/16/013.html

For Forsythe wannabes
From the New Jersey Star-Ledger, a report on a special dance class:
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-1/1050475117104300.xml

Miami pride
Letter in the Miami Herald:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/editorial/letters/5615651.htm

DanceConnections
Kelly Apter in The Scotsman briefly reviews a mixed bill at Edinburgh’s Theatre Royal, performed by by Scottish Ballet, Scottish Dance Theatre, BRB, Phoenix Dance and Adam Cooper: “But the loudest plaudit goes to one man - Ashley Page. The new head of Scottish Ballet has moulded his dancers to fit a choreographic style so delicate and exciting that the future of the company has never looked rosier.”
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=439302003

Merce Cunningham
Octavio Roca in th San Francisco Examiner on Merce Cunningham, who has just celebrated his 84th birthday: “His dance is forbidding and abstract, or at least as abstract as human movement can be. Literary, painterly and musical allusions, both explicit and beside the point, nevertheless crop up”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/04/16/DD177011.DTL&type=performance

Ballet troupe calls off China trip
The Lost Angelese Times on the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s decision to call off its China tour because of the SARS epidemic:
http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-et-pasles16apr16.story

Chunky Moves - again
Katrina Lobley in the Sydney Morning Herald interviews choreographer Godeon Obarzanek, who commissioned a survey to find out what people wanted from a dance work: “…a test survey was conducted among three groups: those who were highly informed about dance, the semi-informed and the uninformed… the uninformed group couldn't give conclusive answers. They were ditched from the exercise”
http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2003/04/16/1050172645867.htm

LAST EDITED ON 18-04-03 AT 12:25 PM (GMT)

ABT Studio Company
Up-and-Coming Dancers Committed to the Classical
Continuo, Revelry, Tea and Temptation, Heavenly Bodies
USA, New York, Kaye Playhouse
Dancers: Hidalgo, Tidwell, Busby, DeLong, Fang, Fletcher, Hammoudi, Keene, Lane, Monaco, Potter, Seither
by Jennifer Dunning
    "Robert Hill's new "Revelry," is fascinating in the way it pours classical dancing of the 21st century into the container of the 19th-century pas de deux. Laura Hidalgo and Danny Tidwell more than met every technical challenge with laid-back wit and style."
The New York Times

Golden Mask Awards
The ‘final word’ on the St. Petersburg awards from Raymond Stults in the Moscow Times. On the ballet awards, he writes: “ Privileged over the past 50 years and more to have seen the very best in ballet on the stages of Chicago, New York, London and Paris ( tells us a bit about his age here..), I cannot recall a production of greater overall beauty than the Mariinsky's "Cinderella" (ch. Ratmansky)”
http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/metropolis/stories/2003/04/18/113.html

Contemporary Dance in Russia
Also from the Moscow Times, John Freedman interviews choreographer Gennady Abramov: “The Class of Expressive Plastic Movement was a logical step in Abramov's development as an artist. As a classical dancer working in the provinces from 1960 to 1972, he performed most of ballet's leading male parts.”
http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/metropolis/stories/2003/04/18/105.html

Joffrey Ballet
Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times interviews Gerald Arpino, veteran AD of Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet. Weiss’ piece also includes a lively review of Nils Taverrnier’s documentary on the Paris Opera Ballet Pres des Etoiles
http://www.suntimes.com/output/entertainment/cst-ftr-stage17.html

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Ailey: Been There, Danced That
Following the Subtle Current Upstream, Treading, Serving Nia, Winter in Lisbon
USA, Washington, Kennedy Center Opera House
Dancers: Asca, Brown, Fisher-Harrell
by Teresa Wiltz
    "You can't help but wish for more for these gifted, hard-working dancers a new movement vocabulary, dramatic story ballets, something, anything, to push them past their comfort zones. Minus artistry, the technical becomes mechanical."
Washington Post