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December 31st: New England Presenter Travel Fund, December 31st: Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet Scholarship, December 31st: 24 Seven Dance Convention, December 31st: National Theater Project Presenter Travel Grant, December 31st: Breck Creek Artist-in-Residence Program

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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

Nashville Ballet Brings Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” to the Stage in November

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Beginning on November 1, Nashville audiences can enjoy Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s acclaimed A Streetcar Named Desire . The work includes stage direction by Nancy Meckler, as well as costumes and set designs by Niki Turner. The female powerhouses behind the piece make it a notable program during a season in which women remain the minority within U.S. ballet company seasons.

DDP Founder and President Liza Yntema will visit Nashville Ballet in November to learn more about the company and its efforts to include and prioritize women in this and future seasons.

Watch the company’s promotional video for the production below!

Learn more about Nashville Ballet and the upcoming season here.

Alicia Alonso – Legendary Dancer, Director, and Leader in Ballet- Has Died

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According to the National Ballet of Cuba, Alicia Alonso, the prima ballerina assoluta and founder of what would become the National Ballet of Cuba, passed away on October 17th, 2019 at the age of 98.

For The New York Times, Jack Anderson wrote, “A ballerina of unusual range and power, she continued to dance into her 70s despite chronic vision problems.”

Celebrated both in her home country of Cuba and around the world, Alonso was a choreographer and leader as well as a famed dancer, and will be remembered long after her time on this Earth.

Read more about Alonso in The New York Times.

New York Times: Review: At Ballet Theater, Premieres More Pale Than Ghostly

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By Brian Seibert

17 October 2019

At American Ballet Theater’s fall gala on Wednesday, along with premieres by Jessica Lang and Twyla Tharp, there was much talk of women. The honoree, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, the president and chief executive of Celebrity Cruises, drew a parallel between the fight against gender imbalances in her industry and in ballet. Just as she congratulated herself for hiring the first and so far only female captain, so she praised Ballet Theater for its Women’s Movement initiative supporting female choreographers.

The stark maritime statistics were new to me, but not the ballet numbers. For several years now, people in the ballet world have not just been talking about the longstanding gender imbalance in choreography; they’ve been changing it. Efforts like Ballet Theater’s have been giving female choreographers more chances to create work and get it seen, more chances to do what male choreographers have always been allowed to do: sometimes make hits, sometimes make duds.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

ABC7 News: Washington Ballet’s artistic director Julie Kent has defied all odds

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By Alison Starling/ABC7 News

11 October 2019

WASHINGTON (ABC7) — The Washington Ballet Theatre officially opens its new season in October. At the helm of the company is a woman who is known as one of the premier dancers in America, Julie Kent.

The Washington Ballet is not performing Swan Lake until April, but rehearsals are well underway.

In command of each move and magical step is Julie Kent, the artistic director for the Washington Ballet. But for nearly 30 years, she was captivating audiences with the American Ballet Theatre in New York. She was its longest-serving ballerina and principal dancer for more than 20 of those years.

Kent tells ABC7, “I think it was the greatest gift and greatest privilege to spend your life doing something that you love.”

Watch the video here.

The Post and Courier: With new season, Columbia Classical Ballet embraces female focus

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By Erin Jaffe

Columbia Classical Ballet’s new season arrives with a determined focus. This year’s programming will focus on female-driven productions, reflecting internal changes that Artistic Director Radenko Pavlovich feels were a long time coming.

“Well, to be honest, at the end of our last season, it occurred to me that the world is really changing,” he explains. With the #MeToo movement, women are rightfully demanding the respect they deserve. That movement and controversy even touched the ballet world, and it really shook me.”

“Honestly, women are what comes first to mind when people think about ballet, and yet women’s role in leadership positions have been almost exclusively limited to ballet mistresses or coaches,” he continues. “Only recently are there more female choreographers and artistic directors.

“I started thinking, ‘I want to change that in my company and I want the change to be from inside-out.’ I wanted a stronger female presence from the board to the artistic staff to the ballets the company will perform. This season is really a celebration about that change.”

Read the full article in The Post and Courier.

Houston Press: The Martha Graham Dance Company Celebrates Women with The EVE Project

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By Natalie de la Garza

16 October 2019

It’s a good time to be performing the great Martha Graham’s choreographic masterworks. But according to Janet Eilber, the artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, that wasn’t always the case.

“There were a few decades in there where they were just old,” says Eilber. “But they are now old enough and they’ve proven themselves enough to be called classics.”

If you are one of the few who hears “classics” and expects the company to appear on stage with horns and a breast plate when they finally return to Houston after 15 years, well, you’ll be disappointed. With The EVE Project, Eilber says they are honoring Graham’s legacy of innovation through a theme that highlights Graham’s “revolutionary approach to female characters on stage.”

Read the full article in The Houston Press.

Aszure Barton at City Center with Houston Ballet

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Houston Ballet comes to New York City with Morris, Barton, and Peck.

Don’t Miss Work from Three of Today’s Most Acclaimed Choreographers on October 24-25.

Reposted from City Center:

Aszure Barton has been described as “brilliant” by The San Francisco Chronicle, “audacious” by The New York Times, and The Boston Globe considers her “a rare accomplishment in the world of contemporary dance.” Come In was a breakout work for Barton, placing her signature style of measured gesture and lyrical whimsy on the international dance map. In it, she uses a group of 14 men moving together in taut, spare unison, finding powerful stillness together and then breaking apart in gleeful exaltation to meditate on the nature of conformity and self-expression.

Listen to Aszure Barton talk about the creation of Come In.

Star Tribune: Courtly dances, spiritual journeys and a rave at Minnesota Dance Theatre

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By Sheila Regan

12 October 2019

The first flakes of snow that fell on the Twin Cities on Friday night didn’t seem to stop Minnesota Dance Theatre from bringing a bit of spring to their fall concert. The company’s repertory piece, “Boccherini Dances,” choreographed by late founder Loyce Houlton in 1984 to the courtly music of Luigi Boccherini, feels like a spring romp.

The piece requires huge amounts of technical skill from the three pairs of dancers performing it, while also emitting a graceful airiness. Boccherini’s music has a complex structure, with lots of repetition and variation, as does Houlton’s choreography. It’s satisfying to watch the three pairs diverge, switch partners, and come back again, with each pair getting moments to shine with dazzling lifts and falls. There are a couple of times when the three male performers dance together, all of which are quite fun.

MDT’s fall season features two world premieres. The first is “The Gateless Gate,” by Alanna Morris-Van Tassel, who shows herself adept at molding groups of bodies in movement in the Lab’s vast space, and at playing with tempo, juxtaposing moments of slow motion and stillness with sudden sprinting breaks.

Read the full article in The Star Tribune.

The Oklahoman – Penny Saunders Commissioned by Oklahoma City Ballet

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From the article: On their toes: OKC Ballet leaping into 2019-2020 with October production Michael Pink’s ‘Dracula’

By Brandy McDonnell

10 October 2019

…

The middle portion of the triple bill will be a world premiere piece by Penny Saunders, whom Mills met when they were both selected in 2017 for the National Choreographers Initiative.

“She’s just very talented … and I want to perpetuate the idea of female choreographers,” he said. “There’s a lot of misogyny in ballet. … There’s not a lot of female choreographers.”

Looking to the ‘Future’

An add-on production to the subscription season, OKC Ballet will present “Future Voices: A Choreographic Showcase” March 12-15 in the Inasmuch Foundation Theatre at the Brackett Dance Center. Intended to be an annual event, the showcase will feature works by Mills, OKC Ballet staffers and dancers, as well as dance professors from local universities.

“This isn’t meant to be a finished performance. This is meant to be people coming into our building and learning about choreography,” Mills said. “If I hadn’t had similar opportunities like this, I wouldn’t have developed into the choreographer that I am.”

Read the full article in The Oklahoman.

New York Times: Review: In Merce Cunningham’s Honor, Pam Tanowitz Thrills

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By Roslyn Sulcas

11 October 2019

LONDON — Seven dancers, their backs to the audience, heads turned in profile, move on to the stage in silence, stepping to the left on a bent leg, then ceremoniously curving the right leg forward. Arms interlinked behind backs, the women in soft draped dresses, they look like ancient figures on a Greek vase. The music begins: not ancient at all, but jagged, abrasive strings. A lone man appears. He is performing the same sequence, but facing forward.

Pam Tanowitz’s “Everyone Keeps Me,” a new work for the Royal Ballet that premiered here on Thursday, has begun, and for 20 entrancing minutes, we are in her strange, resonantly poetic world.

The dance critic Edwin Denby once wrote that “the strange thing about making pieces that have no logical narrative or logical formal structure is that it needs an exceedingly dramatic gift.” He was talking about Merce Cunningham, but that’s true too of Ms. Tanowitz, a choreographer who labored quietly at her craft for decades and now is suddenly in demand everywhere. In the last year, she has created pieces for the New York City Ballet, the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Paul Taylor Company, among others.

Read the full article in The New York Times.