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DDP Talks To

"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery

Up to date announcements of company seasons, featured artists and special programming as well as grant of awards such as Princess Grace, or artistic appointments

Broadway World: Nashville Ballet’s 35th Season Revealed

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10 February 2020

Dubbed “a Nashville miracle” by the New York Times, Tennessee’s premiere ballet company returns for the 2020-2021 season with a spectacular repertoire of fantastic favorites and electrifying new works. With a continued commitment to presenting powerful and transformative art, Nashville Ballet’s next season is meant to uplift, inspire, and engage audiences with impeccable storytelling, athleticism, and artistry.

Season highlights include the return of Vasterling’s celebrated blockbuster adaptation of Peter Pan, a reimagined and expanded take on the gothic tale of Dracula, and a series of works created exclusively by female choreographers and composers. Additionally, the season will feature a choreographic workshop offering audiences a first look at Vasterling’s next major project, new additions to the holiday classic, Nashville’s Nutcracker, and much more.

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Attitude: New Works by Women

February 12-14, 2021
TPAC’s Polk Theater

Orange choreography by Gabrielle Lamb
Music composed by Caleb Burhans
NEW! Choreography by Mollie Sansone
Music composed by Larissa Maestro
Live music performed by Lockeland Strings
NEW! Choreography by Suzanne Haag
Music composed by Fanny Mendelssohn
Superstitions choreography by Jennifer Archibald
Music composed by Cristina Spinei

This popular series known for unique musical collaborations and shedding light on important cultural themes brings female perspectives to the forefront this season with a production featuring new works exclusively from women!

Read the full article on Broadway World.

Pointe Magazine – Onstage this Week: A Lot of Women

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By Chava Lansky

4 February 2020


Wonder what’s going on in ballet this week? We’ve rounded up some highlights.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa Explores the Life of Frida Kahlo for Dutch National Ballet

In 2016, prolific choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa created Broken Wings for English National Ballet, a short piece diving into the life of iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Soon after, Dutch National Ballet artistic director Ted Brandsen offered her the chance to expand that work into a full-length ballet. The result, simply titled Frida, makes its premiere February 6-25 in Amsterdam.

In collaboration with British composer Peter Salem and Dutch designer Dieuweke van Reij, Ochoa’s ballet explores Kahlo’s fraught relationship with artist Diego Rivera, her bisexuality, the physical and emotional pain she endured and the way that she crafted her own image through her paintings. Dutch National Ballet has put out a series of YouTube videos exploring the creation of the piece; catch the first one above.

Read the full article on Pointe.

Broadway World: 50 FORWARD: Dance Theatre Of Harlem Announces Annual NYC Season

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29 January 2020

The celebration continues this spring for the illustrious Dance Theatre of Harlem, following over a year of performances that both commemorated its 50th anniversary and paid tribute to its late, legendary co-founder, Arthur Mitchell. A former New York City Ballet dancer and the first black dancer to be elevated to Principal, Mr. Mitchell’s extraordinary, trailblazing vision for ballet thrives well into the 21st century through DTH’s performances across the country and around the world. Along with master teacher Karel Shook, Arthur Mitchell challenged perceptions of what classical ballet could be and created new opportunities for artists to join him in changing the landscape of the arts. Dance Theatre of Harlem’s 2020 season builds on this monumental legacy while looking to the future of ballet.

Dance Theatre of Harlem will kick off its New York City Center homecoming season with its annual Vision Gala on April 15 with an evening titled 50 Forward, setting a vision for DTH’s next 50 years. Bringing together the company’s past and future, the evening will feature the New York premieres of both a richly expanded version of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s recent hit Balamouk, featuring a live performance by Grammy-winning klezmer band The Klezmatics, and excerpts from Resident Choreographer Robert Garland‘s soon-to-be-titled new ballet. Company member Dylan Santos stages Odalisques Variations from Petipa’s Le Corsaire, and the company pays tribute to late Grammy-winning operatic star and DTH Board of Directors member Jessye Norman with Arthur Mitchell‘s Balm in Gilead.

Read the full article on Broadway World.

Verb Ballets: Meet choreographer Stephanie Martinez

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3 February 2020

Verb Ballets was thrilled to welcome sought after choreographer Stephanie Martinez to studio last week. Her versatility expands the boundaries of contemporary ballet movement language with original creations for Charlotte Ballet, Ballet Hispanico, Luna Negra Dance Theater, Sacramento Ballet, Eugene Ballet, Nashville Ballet, Ballet Memphis, Kansas City Ballet, Dance Kaleidoscope, Kansas City Dance Festival, Moving Arts Cincinnati, and National Choreographers Initiative among others, . In 2014, Martinez received a “Winning Works: Choreographers of Color” award from The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. Stephanie Martinez mounted Wandering On, originally commissioned by Eugene Ballet in 2017 on the company. The work is inspired by the Sanskrit word Samsara that translates as “wandering through the constant cycle”.This work will make its Cleveland premiere on February 8, 2020 at The Breen Center on a program of all female choreographers.

Read the full blog on Verb Ballets’ website.

Sacramento Bee: Pints and plies: A pairing that brings opportunity to ballet and the uninitiated

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By Mitchel Bobo

29 January 2020

Artistic Director Amy Seiwert recalled debuting a piece during the Sacramento Ballet company’s inaugural Beer and Ballet event in 1994. The event was a chance for the troupe’s dancers a rare opportunity to step from the back of the class to the front of the room.

“It’s an incredibly vulnerable place to put yourself in. You make a ballet, you put it out there and you have no control how people see it, what they experience when they see it or what they take away from it. And that’s hard because you have to just put it out there and hope it reaches an audience in the way you intended,” Seiwert said.

Beer and Ballet’s choreographic workshops give nine members of the local ensemble the opportunity to create and perform their own pieces, which will debut Jan. 31 at 7:30 p.m. and run through Feb. 16. Each performance is followed by a Q&A session where dancers field questions from attendees.

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Previous reporting by The Bee highlighted Seiwert’s initiatives to create channels for women to step into leadership roles in ballet. According to the Dance Data Project, Seiwert and Sacramento Ballet’s commission of The Nutcracker was the only female-choreographed, full-length world premiere during the 2018-19 season.

“Amy is passionate about making sure there is equal representation of male and female representation in choreography. It’s vital that there are more female voices represented in the ballet world,” Feldman said.

Read the full article in the Sacramento Bee.

The Atlantic: The Death of the American Dance Critic

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By Madison Mainwaring

6 August 2015

Misty Copeland has become something of a household name in recent months. In late June, she became the first black ballerina to be named principal at American Ballet Theater, one of the most storied companies in the U.S., and her success is a milestone in the predominantly white world of ballet. But while her legacy is endlessly analyzed, her technical, lyrical, and theatrical abilities as a dancer are less frequently discussed: She can attack steps with fierce intensity, plays a great Juliet, and possesses unparalleled comedic timing. This is because hardly any of the countless stories published about Copeland have been written by dance critics—a dying breed of writers uniquely capable of offering informed commentary on the singular talents she brings to the stage.

Over the course of the last 20 years dance coverage—and dance criticism in particular—has been decimated in the mainstream press. This past April, Gia Kourlas left Time Out New York, where she had been dance editor for 20 years, after they eliminated her stand-alone section. The New York Post stopped commissioning regular reviews from its critic Leigh Witchel in 2013, and Jennifer Homans left The New Republic last year. The Village Voice and New York have both let go of their regular dance writers and editors in the past 15 years. The trend hasn’t been limited to New York, the dance capital of the U.S. either: Both the Los Angeles Times and the Orange Country Register laid off their critics, and the San Francisco Chronicle hasn’t had a full-time dance writer since 2004. “There aren’t many outlets to begin with, and every day you hear about another [critic] going down,” said Marina Harss, who writes about dance for The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Which leaves very few publications with house critics and editors who are dedicated to the art form. Today there are only two full-time dance critics in the country: Alastair Macaulay of The New York Times and Sarah Kaufman of The Washington Post. Some freelancers continue to publish reviews, but more likely than not the space for this kind of writing has been cut significantly. One could argue that though this trend is unfortunate, it’s almost expected given that dance concerts cater to small audiences, and the constituency reading about them tends to be even smaller still. But for a medium that can be difficult to understand, generalist coverage remains vital to the accessibility of the dance scene.

Read the full article in The Atlantic.

DDP Cited in Guardian Article on the All-Women Season of Royal New Zealand Ballet

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The Guardian: ‘All men for 150 years’: women take centre stage at Royal New Zealand Ballet

By Charlotte Graham-McLay

31 January 2020

It’s an ethereal art form in which dancers, who are overwhelmingly female, strive for unattainable perfection performing works almost always created by men. But in uncompromising world of ballet, where the work of female choreographers is often relegated to one-off showcases while men take the spotlight, a ballet company in New Zealand is making history with a whole year of performances that put women creators centre stage.

“For 14 years I’d only ever performed works by men,” says Alice Topp, a ballerina and, in 2018, the second woman ever to hold the post of resident choreographer at the Australian Ballet in its almost 60-year history. Now, she perches on a Swiss ball in the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s light, airy rehearsal studios in Wellington, still sweating from the morning class she has just ducked out of, hair loose around her shoulders.

Things have changed in the ballet world – Topp wears sweatpants to class these days, rather than pink leotards, and no longer scrapes her hair back into a tight bun – but not fast enough.

“It’s hard when you have to fight for opportunities,” she says. “I want to see a shift happen, and that’s not going to happen from sitting back and talking about it.”

In 2020, the Royal New Zealand Ballet will become the first classical company in the world to perform an entire year of works choreographed solely by women – including one by Topp – a move that is, shockingly, radical.

Read the full article in the Guardian.

The Standard: Tamara Rojo to choreograph Florence Nightingale-inspired first production with English National Ballet

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By Robert Dex

Dancer Tamara Rojo will choreograph her first ballet with a production inspired by Florence Nightingale.

The star will also direct the show as part of the English National Ballet’s (ENB) new season which was announced today.

Ms Rojo, who as artistic director of the company has overseen its move to a new HQ in east London, will adapt the classic 19th century ballet, Raymonda, setting it during the Crimean war.

She said: “It continues to be a part of my vision for English National Ballet to look at classics with fresh eyes, to make them relevant, find new contexts, amplify new voices and ultimately evolve the art form.  

“Raymonda is a beautiful ballet – extraordinary music, exquisite and intricate choreography – with a female lead who I felt deserved more of a voice, more agency in her own story. Working with my incredible creative team, I am setting Raymonda in a new context and adapting the narrative in order to bring something unique, relevant and inspiring to our audiences.  

“I have truly enjoyed delving into the creative process of adapting and choreographing a large-scale ballet and have been inspired by Florence Nightingale’s drive and passion.”

Read the full article in The Standard.

Dance Magazine: This Ballet Company Will Only Dance Works by Women in 2020. The Director Doesn’t Think That Should Be News

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By Steve Sucato

21 January 2020

It’s fitting that New Zealand, the first country to give women the right to vote, should also be the place where, for the first time, a major ballet company will pre­sent an entire 12-month dance season devoted to works by female choreographers. But according to Royal New Zealand Ballet’s artistic director, former Pacific Northwest Ballet star Patricia Barker, programming this historic season was far less difficult than it might sound.

At the start of your tenure in 2017, there was some controversy around the ratio of non–New Zealander dancers and staff hired. Has the dust finally settled?

That really never had anything to do with me. I was just the unlucky one that stepped into it. My goal was to turn the attention back to the art. As soon as we did that, all of that uproar dissipated.

Read the full article from Dance Magazine.

BWW Feature: THE DAY at Tennessee Performing Arts Center

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By Melia Kraus-har

17 January 2020

Cellist Maya Beiser’s history with composer David Lang’s 2001 work world to come includes commissioning and recording it for an album, accompanying choreographer Pontus Lidberg’s film Labyrinth Within (utilizing Lang’s score) which introduced her to dancer Wendy Whelan in 2010. And now, as a collaboration with Whelan, choreographer Lucinda Childs, and commissioning an additional “prequel” composition from Lang for the evening-length work, THE DAY, to be co-presented by Tennessee Performing Arts Center and Oz Arts Nashville in partnership with Nashville Ballet on January 18, 2020. Speaking by phone, Beiser described her early practice sessions learning world to come, born out of 9/11 experiences. “I kept getting imagery for the music while I practiced. While music is usually a very visual experience for me, I kept seeing a woman dancing. She embodied the feelings of everyone’s experience. The piece became multi-disciplinary to reflect the visceral aspect of sense and remembrance. THE DAY is not a 9/11 memorial, but builds upon the memories we hold on to, or the images that deeply shape memory.”

In terms of building the creative team for the work, Beiser felt strongly that women should shape the artistic direction. Whelan also concurred by phone, deeming that she “played it safe” in her initial departure from New York City Ballet (NYCB) working in a traditional male to female structure learned from her classical ballet background. Whelan credited her transition into contemporary works for developing confidence in diversifying gender leadership and thinking bigger, which “ultimately gave her the courage to return to NYCB” in her current role as Associate Artistic Director. Whelan described her time away from NYCB as giving her tools to support current company artists with what she wanted and needed as a young dancer, lauding the value of collaboration for both ballet and contemporary artist development. Whelan had wanted to work with Childs (ballet dancers respond well to her movement vocabulary), and Beiser was familiar with Childs’ work with mutual colleague Philip Glass. Beiser valued Childs’ approach to music and movement, noting that “not all choreographers read music.” Beiser described Childs’ interpretation of the music as “broad and deep, with a complex polyrhythmic pattern.”

Read the full article on Broadway World.