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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
July 31st: Community Engagement Artists and Creatives Grant, 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
×"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
By Lilah Ramzi
16 July 2019
IT’S A SUBLIME SPRING day in New York, but Wendy Whelan wouldn’t know a thing about it. She’s spent the day in the windowless studios of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, where rehearsals for George Balanchine’s Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet are under way. Today she’s dressed in dark skinny jeans and a navy cardigan, but even in this everyday outfit, you can see a body sculpted by the three decades she spent at New York City Ballet, 28 of those years as a principal dancer. In a profession where women often bow out by their mid-30s, Whelan’s tenure onstage was remarkable. Now 52, she has become the first woman in the company’s history to hold a permanent position within the artistic leadership. “I never imagined myself here,” she says. “I just thought, That’s usually a guy’s role.”
Her appointment as the associate artistic director of NYCB in February—alongside Jonathan Stafford as the new artistic director of NYCB and School of American Ballet—not only ended a tumultuous year, it also signaled that the company was in need of a dramatic shift. In January of 2018, Peter Martins, the NYCB’s star dancer turned ballet master in chief, retired, his resignation precipitated by accusations of sexual harassment. (Martins maintains his innocence, and the NYCB’s investigation did not corroborate the allegations.) Then, just days before the fall season, City Ballet fired two male dancers (the company had earlier accepted the resignation of a third) accused of sharing explicit photos of female dancers. The company would “not put art before common decency,” announced principal dancer Teresa Reichlen in a speech delivered on the evening of the fall gala, standing onstage with her fellow dancers.
Read the full article on Vogue.com.
9 July 2019
Melissa Barak’s Ballet Company, Barak Ballet, is becoming a staple at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica.
Since 2013, they have been appearing annually and she has continually delivered her talent and creativity to her home town. A native Santa Monican, she is now one of America’s foremost rising female choreographers. Ms. Barak spent a decade dancing for New York City Ballet and choreographing for the School and Company of American Ballet at age 22. And her tenacity has paid off.
On the program were three new works, the first being choreographed by South African born Andi Schermoly, entitled “Within Without,” which explores the pain women endure when a pregnancy does not come to fruition; featuring Julia Erickson, Zachary Guthier and Stephanie Kim, to several haunting and beautiful pieces of music by Vivaldi, The Chopin Project and an operatic vocal solo “Cessate, omai cessate,” it begins with a fervent female solo, very nicely done.
Read the full article on Broadway World.
9 July 2019
Ford Theatres presents Women Rising – Choreography from the Female Perspective, a program assembled and produced by Deborah Brockus, artistic director of the annual Los Angeles Dance Festival, featuring a stellar line up of ten Los Angeles-area choreographers and dance companies on Friday, August 16 at 8:30pm at Ford Theatres.
The companies include Blue13 Dance (Achinta S. McDaniel), BrockusRED (Deborah Brockus), Heidi Duckler Dance, JazzAntiqua (Pat Taylor), Kitty McNamee, Kybele Dance Theatre (Seda Aybay), LA Contemporary Dance Company (Genevieve Carson), Luminario Ballet (Judith FLEX Helle) presenting “Turf” by Bella Lewitzky, , MashUP Contemporary Dance Company (Victoria Brown and Sarah Rodenhouse) starting the show in a production number by JoAnn Divito, Rosanna Gamson/Worldwide, and Whyteberg (Gracie Whyte and Laura Berg).
Filling every inch of the Ford with dance, Women Rising celebrates both the groundbreaking work of the Los Angeles-based female choreographers that were instrumental in the creation of modern dance beginning in the early 1900s. That creative excellence lives on today in the current generation of female choreographers, whose styles are influenced by modern, jazz, Bollywood and contemporary but who share the perspective that comes from being a woman creating dance in Los Angeles today.
Read the full article on Broadway World.
BalletX presents The Little Prince, opening July 10-21 at The Wilma Theater. This world premiere full-length story ballet is unlike anything the company has done before! Meet the amazing collaborators behind The Little Prince, and secure your seats today–tickets going fast!!! |
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Choreographer Won the UK’s Critics’ Circle National Award for Best Classical Choreography for Streetcar Named Desire, and is the 2019 recipient of Jacob Pillow’s Dance Award. |
Peter Salem, Composer/Musician Won the Best Television Programme Music category at the Music and Sound Awards 2016 for composing the soundtrack to BBC’s hit TV show Call the Midwife. |
Matt Saunders, Set Designer Designed Opera Philadelphia’s critically acclaimed 2017 premiere We Shall Not Be Moved, which toured to NYC’s Apollo Theater and London’s Hackney Empire Theatre. |
Danielle Truss, Costume Designer Costume creator for Tulsa Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Des Canadiens and Linea Recta for Ballet Hispanico. Costume shop manager at Grand Rapids Ballet. |
Michael Korsch, Lighting Designer Longtime resident lighting designer/technical director for Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Arizona, and the Laguna Dance Festival, among several leading companies. |
Nancy Meckler, Dramaturg Theater director whose credits include productions with the Kennedy Center, Shakespeare’s Globe, and the UK’s Shared Experience, where she was Artistic Director for twenty-two years. |
Learn more on BalletX’s website!
By Marina Harss
11 June 2019
After almost a decade at The Washington Ballet, Brooklyn Mack has struck out on his own. Last summer, after unsuccessful contract negotiations with the company—now under the direction of Julie Kent—the 32-year-old star decided to go it alone. So far, his full-time freelance career has taken him to Hong Kong, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Georgia (the country, not the state) and various cities across the U.S. But his biggest debut is still to come. This month, he appears with American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House for four performances of Le Corsaire, playing both Conrad and Ali.
I was contacted on Instagram by Kevin McKenzie’s assistant. At first, I thought I was being pranked!
Most kids dream about dancing at ABT, and I was no exception. Actually, I spent one year in the Studio Company when I was 18 (in 2005). Isabella Boylston, Cory Stearns and Thomas Forster were all there at the time. So I’m excited to reconnect.
Read the full interview on Dance Magazine’s blog.
By Michael Cooper
27 June 2019
American Ballet Theater’s Women’s Movement — a recent initiative to support female choreographers, who have often struggled to get their dances staged by major companies — will yield more fruit this fall, when the company will present world premieres of ballets by Twyla Tharp and Gemma Bond and the New York premiere of a Jessica Lang work.
The season, which the company announced Thursday, will open Oct. 16 with a gala featuring the premiere of the new Tharp ballet, which will be set to Brahms’s String Quintet No. 2 in G major, Op. 111. The gala will also feature the New York premiere of Ms. Lang’s “Let Me Sing Forevermore,” a pas de deux set to a medley of songs recorded by Tony Bennett.
The following week the company will give the world premiere of a new work by Ms. Bond, a member of its corps de ballet, which she is setting to Benjamin Britten’s “Suite on English Folk Tunes.” And Ballet Theater will bring back a number of other works by women during the fall season, including Ms. Tharp’s popular “Deuce Coupe,” set to music by the Beach Boys; Ms Lang’s “Garden Blue,” which had its premiere last fall; and Michelle Dorrance’s “Dream within a Dream (deferred),” set to the music of Duke Ellington.
Read the full article in The New York Times.
We are thrilled to announce CBA’s 2019 – 2020 Director’s Fellows: choreographer and filmmaker Kim Brandstrup and performing arts critic and author Alastair Macaulay. The Director’s Fellowship gives a CBA residency to artists, scholars, and practitioners who have made significant contributions to the field of ballet. Director’s Fellows bring deep expertise and informed practical guidance to the residency, strengthening the work of CBA’s fellows, staff, and community at large. |
Read the full press release on the website of The Center for Ballet and the Arts.
By Zoë Anderson
In [Un]leashed, Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) shows off alert, individual dancers in a programme by women choreographers. Didy Veldman’s new Sense of Time lacks focus, but the dancers highlight the delicacy of Jessica Lang’s Lyric Pieces and the nimble characterisation of Ruth Brill’s new Peter and the Wolf.
This London season will be BRB’s last under director David Bintley, who has led the company since 1995. It shows some of the key qualities of Bentley’s tenure: his commitment to new work, his record of programming work by women (all too rare among ballet directors) and, alongside this triple bill, his own popular romcom, Hobson’s Choice.
Lang’s Lyric Pieces, created in 2012, sets dancers moving fleetly through Grieg piano pieces, weaving in and out of a folding paper set. Maureya Lebowitz and Celine Gittens are standouts in a bright cast.
See the full article in The Independent.
21 June 2019
The Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo is bringing the very best of UK culture to Colombia as part of a year-long program to host the United Kingdom as its Guest Nation of Honor. Starting with the first-ever performance in the country by the Academy of Ancient Music to the much-anticipated concert in May of the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle, and recent piano recital by Benjamin Grosvenor, the main stage of the Teatro Mayor is also the venue for representatives of other artistic genres; including theatre with a romping – almost tribal – take on Dickens’ Oliver Twist by the Avant Guard Dance Company, and on June 22, the double bill “Ritualia/TuTuMucky” by the Scottish Dance Theatre.
Based in Dundee, Scotland, the Scottish Dance Theatre is also marking its first performance in Colombia with a work by Colette Sadler inspired by Bronislava Nijiaka’s ballet Les Noces and set to the music of Igor Stravinski. The second performance of the evening is TuTuMucky by the London choreographer Botis Seva.
With its focus on the physicality of dance, the Scottish Dance Theatre delivers an energetic production. Adding to a narrative that elevates classical dance with avant-garde sequences, Ritualia celebrates gender and the body as an extension of the natural world. “There is also the idea of the body as a way to gain power, to empower ourselves,” states Joan Clevillé, the theatre’s artistic director. “I think there’s a sense of urgency, of moving in a very visceral way and finding a very urban language. It’s a very different contrast between the two pieces.”
Read the full article in the City Paper Bogata.
Watch a sneak peek of BalletX’s newest commission: The Little Prince. The work will be full-length – one of very few by women this season.
Courtesy of BalletX.
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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