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"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

Dance Magazine: Without $1 Million By December, This Essential Residency Program Might Be In Danger

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By Lauren Wingenroth

24 October 2019

Just last year, the previously Rockville, Maryland-based American Dance Institute—now called the Lumberyard Center for Film and Performing Arts—moved to a 30,000-square foot-former lumberyard in Catskill, New York, spending 5 million dollars to renovate the building.

Now, the organization needs to raise 1 million dollars by the end of 2019, or risk having to shut down their pre-premiere technical rehearsal program.

What happened between last May, when the much-talked-about facility opened its doors, and today, when Lumberyard’s signature program faces potential closure?

The costs of opening the facility were just part of the problem, says Lumberyard’s executive and artistic director Adrienne Willis. It cost more to get the building operating than they expected, and some support they were counting on didn’t come through.

But Willis says the problem Lumberyard is facing is a more systemic one, that speaks to how the creation process has changed in recent years—but funding models haven’t kept up.

Since 2011, Lumberyard has been providing artists with space to hold extended technical rehearsals before a work’s premiere. (Part of the reason for their move was proximity to New York City, where most of these works end up premiering.) Lumberyard is the only facility of its kind in the United States, giving artists one or two weeks in the space with housing, a full crew and a public work-in-progress showing.

Learn more in Dance Magazine.

Tulsa Ballet to Stage US Premiere of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s ‘Vendetta’

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Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Vendetta, A Mafia Story will see its American premiere in Tulsa next March. The synopsis is dramatic and includes a boss woman:

Chicago, 1950’s. Rosalia Carbone’s wedding day is marred by a violent murder, beginning a long standing grudge between infamous rival mob families. When the Godfather, the feared patriarch of the family, is killed in a shootout, an enraged Rosalia takes his place.

Full of red hot emotions like passion, anger and greed and depicted through the beauty of dance, Vendetta is a thrilling show where Broadway meets film noir. Add in a touch of Moulin Rouge and a hint of Vaudeville, plus a lot of humor, and bada-bing! You’re guaranteed a captivating performance.

Tulsa Ballet artistic director Marcello Angelini is also taking steps to feature female costume and lighting designers in the upcoming season, with Julie Duro lighting the company’s Nutcracker. Female choreographers, are also given attention, with Penny Saunders joining the roster via a world premiere coming to the company soon.

Learn more about the company’s season and Vendetta here.

Watch past works below:

The Times: Viviana Durante: How Isadora Duncan drew me back to the stage

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By Debra Craine

23 October 2019

There are many ways for a ballerina to retire. Sylvie Guillem packed in her illustrious career with enormous grace at the age of 50 and disappeared from the public eye; Alessandra Ferri retired and then changed her mind, pursuing a new career as a performer in her fifties; Darcey Bussell left Covent Garden in her thirties only to find even greater fame as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing in her forties. Viviana Durante chose the hardest route — starting a company.

Read the full feature in The Times.

WTOP: Q&A: Washington Ballet kicks off 2019-2020 season with ‘NEXTsteps’

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By Jason Fraley

23 October 2019

From “The Nutcracker” to “Swan Lake,” “Balanchine + Ashton” to “Coppélia,” it’s going to be an exciting 2019-2020 season for The Washington Ballet.

It all kicks off this week with “NEXTsteps,” offering three never-before-seen productions at Sidney Harman Hall this Wednesday through Sunday.

“We’re continuing our commitment to the creative process and advancing dance into the 21st century with three new commissioned works that are making their world premieres,” artistic director Julie Kent told WTOP.

“The 2019-2020 season will clearly mark the incredible artistic growth of the organization after [my] three seasons here. This beautiful season opening shows our commitment to the whole spectrum of what our art form has to offer, creating opportunities for our dancers to expand their understanding, artistic depth and physical and technical depth.”

The first world premiere of the “NEXTsteps” program is Jessica Lang’s traditional work “Reverence,” adapting Robert Schuman’s 11-movement piece “Symphonic Etudes” performed live by pianist Glenn Sales. There is no specific story per se, but rather an interpretive view of eight dancers (four men and four women).

Listen to/Read the full discussion on WTOP.

Wall Street Journal: Ladies First at American Ballet Theatre

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By Robert Greskovic

22 October 2019

The remarks at American Ballet Theatre’s Wednesday gala, which opened the company’s season that runs through Sunday, often focused on “ABT Women’s Movement,” launched in 2018 as “an ongoing initiative to support the creation, exploration and staging of new works by women for ABT and ABT Studio Company.” To that end, two of the newest additions to the 79-year-old troupe’s repertory presented at the gala were by female choreographers; another premiere, also by a woman, is in the offing this week, as ABT aims to right the imbalance between ballets in current repertory by women versus those by men.

So far the fledgling program has yet to produce a strong work, but perhaps Gemma Bond’s “A Time There Was,” which has its premiere tomorrow, will be the first. The two works already unveiled offer little to suggest they’ll find longevity at ABT.

Of these latest efforts, Twyla Tharp’s “A Gathering of Ghosts,” to Brahms’s String Quintet in G Major, Op. 111, held the stage more vividly but not impressively enough to indicate staying power. The 27-minute ballet showcases Herman Cornejo as its designated Host. Mr. Cornejo is celebrating his 20th anniversary with ABT this year and will be featured in a special program on Saturday evening that will include Ms. Tharp’s new creation.

Read the full article in The Wall Street Journal.

Pointe Magazine: Stella Abrera to Retire from American Ballet Theatre in June

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By Amy Brandt

21 October 2019

American Ballet Theatre announced today that, after 24 years, beloved principal dancer Stella Abrera will retire from the stage this coming summer. Her farewell performance will be June 13, 2020, at the Metropolitan Opera House, dancing the title role in Giselle.

Giselle holds special significance for her. In 2015, Abrera, then a 37-year-old soloist, made a triumphant debut in the title role, stepping in for an injured dancer at the last minute. (She herself had been slated to dance Giselle seven years earlier, but a debilitating injury sidelined her. It took years for her to fully recover.) Shortly after her performance, and after 14 years as a soloist, Abrera was made a principal dancer. “At my age and with the amount of time I had been out I didn’t think it was going to happen,” she told Pointe in 2016. “I thought, My career is going to be over soon, I’d better just go for broke whenever I go out onstage.”

Since then she’s more than made up for lost time in debuts including Aurora, Juliet, Cinderella, Terpsichore in Balanchine’s Apollo and Princess Tea Flower in Alexei Ratmansky’s Whipped Cream. The Filipino-American dancer has also spent plenty of time giving back: She founded Steps Forward for the Phillippines in 2014 to benefit victims of Hurricane Haiyan, and in 2018 directed a benefit gala in Manila to raise money for the Stella Abrera Dance and Music Hall at CENTEX (Center of Excellence in Public Elementary Education). She is also the director of Pro Studio/Stella Abrera®, a new training and coaching initiative for professional dancers at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park.

There’s no news yet of what Abrera’s next step will be. But in addition to her farewell performance on June 13, audiences can catch her this Tuesday at New York Koch Theater in Alexei Ratmansky’s The Seasons, as well as in performances of Giselle on tour with ABTin Washington, DC (February 15) and Durham, North Carolina (March 28). 

Read the full article in Pointe.

Commercial Appeal: Collage Dance Collective poised to become largest black-owned dance school in the South

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By Desiree Stennett

Kevin Thomas took his first ballet class at 7 years old. He didn’t see his first black principal ballerina perform in a dance company until 19.

And it would another decade before he saw a stage full of black classical ballet dancers while working as a principal dancer for the Dance Theater of Harlem. 

“When I came to Dance Theater of Harlem and saw that color all around me and saw that stage of color, it just was very reaffirming,” said Thomas, artistic director for Memphis’ Collage Dance Collective. “It’s something that you don’t get as a young person growing up in dance, at least back in my time.

“You knew that if you were black, you weren’t the right color for ballet, you had to try be something else. When I went to Dance Theater of Harlem, it was like ‘I am the right color. I am beautiful.’ That’s when I quickly knew we needed more Dance Theater of Harlems.”

That was the inspiration that launched the earliest iteration of the Collage Dance Collective in 2004 in New York. Back then, it was known casually as Friends of Dance Theater of Harlem. 

Today, Collage Dance Collective trains 235 students between ages 2 and 18 every week while maintaining a touring dance company that has performed across the world.

By Fall 2020, they will leave their 2,000-square-foot Broad Avenue studio for a 22,000-square-foot studio to be built in Binghampton near the corner of Sam Cooper Boulevard and Tillman Street.

The move will make Collage the largest black-owned ballet school in the South and one of the largest in the nation, according to Collage’s Executive Director Marcellus Harper.

He said the additional space could mean doubling the number of students they reach within the next three years.

Read the full article on Commercial Appeal.

Royal New Zealand Ballet Continues to Embrace Women

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Royal New Zealand Ballet announced its 2020 season yesterday, which included the announcement of the roster of works for the Venus Rising program opening on May 29, 2020.

The program will premiere two new works by choreographers Andrea Schermoly and Sarah Foster-Sproull (RNZB’s Choreographer in Residence), as well as works by Twyla Tharp and Alice Topp.

Each work boasts unique aspects sure to combine for a unique program – beyond being one of the few programs by a major company that combines this many female works. Tharp’s acclaimed Waterbaby Bagatelles will bring 27 dancers to the stage. Topp’s Aurum , meanwhile, is “inspired by the Japanese art of kintsugi, the practice of mending cracks in precious ceramics with gold, creating a new whole which celebrates the beauty of the broken.” The other two works, both untitled as of now, will round out the mixed-repertory performance with classical music inspired movements (La Folia and Beethoven’s birth inspire Foster-Sproull and Schermoly’s works, respectively).

Buy tickets and learn more on the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s website.

Click on the names below to learn more about the women whose works are featured in the program.

Twyla Tharp

Alice Topp

Andrea Schermoly

Sarah Foster-Sproull

Photo by Liza Voll. Courtesy of Boston Ballet.

Boston Ballet Continues Its ChoreograpHER Initiative Next Week

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The Opening Night of Boston Ballet’s 2019 ChoreograpHER initiative showing will be next Wednesday, October 23 at the Boston Ballet Headquarters.

DDP Founder Liza Yntema will be in Boston to celebrate this special program dedicated to showcasing and championing the work of emerging female choreographers (for the second year in a row).

In early 2019, DDP featured Boston Ballet principal dancer and inaugural ChoreograpHER artist Lia Cirio on our blog. This would be Lia’s first attempt at creating a work. Her piece, Sta(i)r(e)s, was well-received by the Boston audience, and its creation signified a leader among dancers stepping into a role often encouraged only for men at other companies.

To The Globe, artistic director Mikko Nissinen said, “’The best way to help is to provide an opportunity.” The initial showings last year were sold out with, for the first time ever, six women choreographers featured in a performance.

Learn more about ChoreograpHER here.

DDP Founder and President Liza Yntema is a Lead Sponsor of ChoreograpHER.

DDP Mentioned in The Ashley Bouder Project Coverage – KentWired.com

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Kentwired.com: Dance professor’s work showcased in The Ashley Bouder Project anniversary show

By Abigail Miller

19 October 2019

Just two days before her piece “Don’t Explain” was to be performed at The Ashley Bouder Project’s fifth anniversary show, assistant professor of dance Catherine Meredith was in the midst of the only practice she would get with the ballet dancers performing it.

Associate professor of dance Jeffrey Rockland recommended Meredith’s work to Ballet in The City, the company that planned the event, when it reached out to Kent State for a piece from a local choreographer.

Meredith said she had initially sent a different piece called “Aftermath” to Bouder’s team for consideration, but it was turned down because it was too modern.

“Jessica (a representative from Ballet in The City) said, ‘Look, I love the piece but it’s too modern,’” Meredith said. “I said, ‘I have something else.’ I sent it and she’s like, ‘I love it. Let me send it to Ashley.’ Ashley saw it and said, ‘Yeah, let’s put it on the program.’”

The piece is set to Nina Simone’s version of the Billie Holiday song “Don’t Explain” and tells the story of a continuously unfaithful partner. Meredith suspected Simone chose to cover the song due to the similarities between it and her own life.

“Basically it’s a woman saying, ‘Don’t explain, because if you explain it that makes it real and then I have to do something about it,’” Meredith said. “Nina Simone later recorded it and in a parallel life she was married to a man, a police detective who was physically abusive. I think the song also resonated with her as to, ‘here I am, in love with this person who is hurtful.’”

…

According to a recent report done by the non-profit group Dance Data Project, 81 percent of the pieces performed during the 2018-2019 season by the top 50 ballet companies in the United States were choreographed by men.

Read the full article on kentwired.com