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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

Palm Beach Daily News: Miami City Ballet revamps season as pandemic persists

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18 August 2020

Miami City Ballet revamps season as COVID-19 pandemic lingers, replacing in-person shows with planned digital and outdoor alternatives

After spending the five months since the COVID-19 pandemic hit South Florida revising scenarios for the 2020-21 season, Miami City Ballet’s leaders have made a decision.

There will be no in-person performances as announced when the company unveiled its 35th season in March.

At least for now.

Instead, the company plans to roll out a mix of online recordings of performances of new commissions and older works, livestreams from its black-box theater, and outdoor performances.

“I call it an interim season,” Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez said. “This is what we can do during this period until we can get back on stage.”

The schedule hasn’t been solidified.

Buyers of the $1.9 million worth of subscriptions the company has sold will have several options: a refund; a credit for the 2021-22 season, when the company hopes to perform the works originally announced for 2020-21; donating the cost to a newly established Dancer Support Fund; or a combination of choices.

Company leaders never expected the pandemic to drag on this long when they canceled “Don Quixote,” the final program of the 2019-20 season; scrapped the gala; and sent the dancers home on March 13, Executive Director Tania Castroverde Moskalenko said.

Read the full article here.

Seattle Times: How Pacific Northwest Ballet plans to pull off an all-digital season

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By Moira Macdonald

18 August 2020

“All creative people love a good challenge,” said Pacific Northwest Ballet artistic director Peter Boal in a recent interview. His challenge was one that might seem unthinkable even months ago: to create an entirely digital season.

On Tuesday, PNB announced a 2020/21 season that in some ways looked like a typical one: six repertory programs from October through June; two of them full-length story ballets (“Roméo et Juliette” and “Coppélia”), the other four mixed-works programs. The choreographers represented are a blend of long-familiar names (Balanchine, Robbins, Tharp) and contemporary dancemakers presenting new work: Donald Byrd, Alejandro Cerrudo, Jessica Lang, Edwaard Liang, Penny Saunders.

But, like so many other things during this very strange year, this upcoming ballet season is entirely different: Due to restrictions necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, this season will take place online. Most of the works presented will be newly filmed, under appropriate social-distance guidelines; ballets too large to be newly performed safely, such as the story ballets, will be presented in archival footage of previous performances or dress rehearsals.

Once it became clear that the new season would need to be presented this way, Boal said he “combed through the repertory” looking for works that would be appropriate. His challenges were multiple. First, he needed to choose work that could be rehearsed and performed allowing for distance: solos, pas de deux danced by performers already living together, small-scale works in which dancers are well spread out (such as the four-dancer final movement of Ulysses Dove’s “Red Angels,” included in the season’s Rep I). He needed to be conscious of using as many of the company dancers — newly returned to work after furlough — as possible.

Read the full article here.

Pointe: What’s Ahead for Ballet Companies in the Age of COVID-19?

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By Avichai Scher

12 August 2020

Let’s be frank: No one knows what’s ahead for the performing arts in the U.S. With COVID-19 forcing the cancellation of nearly a year of performances so far, including many Nutcrackers, ballet companies face a daunting path ahead with no roadmap for how to survive. While schools can offer classes online or in small groups, what does the future hold for companies when it’s not safe to gather large audiences or corps de ballet?

“We are in for a very hard set of months,” says Michael M. Kaiser, chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland. “Nothing will change until there’s a vaccine.”

Pointe set out to find out what the new normal looks like while the virus is with us.

Online Content and Digital Seasons

When COVID-19 hit, it seemed everything moved online that could, from galas to company class. In a recent online panel, American Ballet Theatre artistic director Kevin McKenzie said the company’s May online gala, which did not include much dancing, was well-received but not a financial success. The Washington Ballet’s gala centered on livestreamed performances and was financially successful. But afterwards, artistic director Julie Kent, a company dancer and a gala chairwoman became ill with COVID-19, despite social distancing and other safety precautions.

Can online platforms be a safe, longer-term source of income and artistic outlet for ballet companies?

Marc Kirschner, a founder of the paid performing arts streaming service Marquee TV, says this moment is a line in the sand for companies’ survival.

Read the full article here.

The Guardian: An Evening with Scottish Ballet review – masked dancers leap into digital

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By Lyndsey Winship

10 August 2020

As a gallant effort to keep the show on the road (or the screen) despite the cancellation of this summer’s edition, Edinburgh international festival has commissioned An Evening with Scottish Ballet. Although “evening” is pushing it, as this is more like a half-hour sizzle reel. Six short films packaged together, old and new, plus existing choreography filmed especially for Covid times by director Michael Sherrington.

There are two pieces from the company’s resident choreographer Sophie Laplane, full of stylish staccato riffs set to 4/4 machine beats. It’s a distinctive style, very watchable. In Oxymore, Rishan Benjamin and Anna Williams dance backstage in front of towers of flight cases and props. Their movement is straight-faced and straight-angled, a kind of un-groovy groove. Idle Eyes, filmed last year, is glitchier and quirkier, and benefits from the texture of a bigger cast, too.

Another pre-coronavirus film, Frontiers, by San Francisco Ballet’s Myles Thatcher, was filmed in 2019, under a concrete flyover. Thatcher aims to undo the gender stereotypes in ballet and he’s created gender-neutral partnering – the same choreography danced by two men, two women or mixed couples, spliced together with fast cuts until it all becomes a blur of identities. Flickering between dancers dressed in androgynous tailoring, the women do lifts, the men sort of swan dive, and it completely works as choreography. Crazy that this is still a boundary to push in 21st-century ballet, of course.

Read the full article here.

 

Dayton Daily News: Dayton Dance Initiative’s free virtual performance takes dance into the light

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By Libby Ballengee

7 August 2020

When the Dayton Dance Initiative’s second annual live performance was canceled in May, there was an obvious sense of disappointment. The professional dancers who planned and were set to perform their own original production had put in countless hours to create it all, from the choreography and music, to costumes and ticketing.

There was no way this dedicated group of dancers was going to throw in the towel that easily. Instead of turning the cancellation into defeat, the dancer-operated project decided to take the performance online and push their creativity even further.

Rather than film or live stream a static performance at the PNC Arts Annex, where the in-person show was to take place, the dance group has created an hour-long “dance movie” showcasing the individual dance pieces in unique and unexpected places.

Read the full article here.

New York Times: She’s Been a Force for Change in Ballet. The World Is Catching Up.

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By Siobhan Burke

6 August 2020

On May 29, four days after George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police, Theresa Ruth Howard posted a call to action on Instagram:

“Demonstrate your outrage

Demonstrate your allyship

Demonstrate your authenticity

We don’t need shadow heroes, step into the light …”

Ms. Howard, a former ballet dancer who founded the digital platform Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet (or MoBBallet), was addressing the institutions she has worked with for the past few years, in a role she sums up as “diversity strategist and consultant.” Those institutions, which include some of the world’s most prestigious ballet companies and schools, are predominantly white, onstage and behind the scenes. They know they need to evolve, and she is helping them.

So when protests against systemic racism and police brutality began sweeping the country, she found their silence disconcerting. “You can’t say you want us, and when we are in peril, not be there for us,” Ms. Howard, 49, said in an interview.

Over the next few days, companies answered her call, or tried, posting statements of support with a hashtag she had started: #balletrelevesforblacklives. (Relevé, a ballet term, is a way of saying “rise up.”) Their messages drew both appreciation and criticism, with many commenters demanding action, not merely words. In an opinion piece for Dance Magazine, Ms. Howard expanded on her thoughts about what leadership should look like in this moment, under the headline “Where Is Your Outrage? Where Is Your Support?”

On Aug. 14, leaders from more than a dozen ballet companies and schools will convene for an online discussion titled “#balletrelevesforblacklives … Or Does It?,” a chance to reflect, beyond social media, on the Black Lives Matter movement and its impact on their institutions. The public event is part of Ms. Howard’s second annual MoBBallet symposium, a series of conversations and lectures that, in her words, “centers Blackness but welcomes all.”

Read the full article in the New York Times.

Pointe: Annabelle Lopez Ochoa Has Been Choreographing Up a Storm on Zoom and Learning How to Create Dance on Film

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By Laura Cappelle

31 July 2020

“Can you caress the wall?,” Annabelle Lopez Ochoa said, frowning to get a better sense of the dancers’ living room on her screen. It was April, and the contemporary ballet choreographer was trying something new. Together with two dancers from the Norwegian National Ballet, Julie Gardette and François Rousseau, she was creating a piece entirely over Zoom—the first of what she now calls “a video diary of what dancers do inside.”

What was originally a one-off celebration for Rousseau, whose stage farewell was cancelled due to the pandemic, has turned into a larger creative project for Ochoa. Since then, from her house in Amsterdam, she has taken to creating dance films, all three to five minutes in length, with performers around the world. Dancers from Tulsa Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Dutch National Ballet and more have already taken part, with others scheduled in the coming months.

Ochoa had to rush to fly out of Tulsa in March, where she had been re-staging her ballet Vendetta, just before international travel was banned. Being stuck at home instead of going from commission to commission prompted some soul-searching. “We’re all forced to go back to point zero. It made me reflect not just on the pieces that I’ve made, but on the artist that I am,” she says. Working with dancers again proved energizing. “What do I like in choreography? I noticed, being on Zoom, that it’s the interaction.”

The early sessions were bumpy. Gardette and Rousseau had to alternate between leaning in close to their screen to see corrections and dancing from enough distance for Ochoa to see the bigger picture. The music proved the biggest hurdle, however. “It was delayed, so I would hear 1, 2, 3, and they would hear pause… 1, 2, 3,” the choreographer says.

She figured out a way to share music that causes less delay (although Ochoa says synchronization is still an issue). One hour on Zoom is now enough for her to craft one minute of choreography, and the dancers she asked to participate generally jumped at the chance to do more than staying in shape while sheltering in place. “It’s not the same just doing ballet class at home: you don’t have that collaboration energy of learning choreography,” Maine Kawashima, a soloist with Tulsa Ballet, says.

Read the full article here.

New York Times: What Is It Like to Watch Live Dance Again? Amazing

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By Gia Kourlas

3 August 2020

TIVOLI, N.Y. — It didn’t bode well that the first live dance I was going to see since mid-March was one I had seen many times before. “Sunshine,” a Larry Keigwin war horse set to the Bill Withers’s classic “Ain’t No Sunshine,” can give a dancer the opportunity to really feel the music in all the worst ways. It’s treacly stuff.

So I’m happy to say that as soon as Melvin Lawovi began to move, my chest tightened; I even sensed — the horror — some tears. Lately, for self-preservation, I’ve been talking myself into believing that I can live without watching dance in person, and while that is true, I clearly miss it. A lot. “Sunshine,” which opened the outdoor Kaatsbaan Summer Festival under beautiful blue skies on Saturday, worked out just fine.

That was also to the credit of Mr. Lawovi, a recent addition to American Ballet Theater, who never delivered a treacly moment as he traversed the stage with the lightest touch. Instead of dwelling on the lyrics or giving into angst, he danced with an unparalleled polish, as if his body were clearing the air.

But repertory alone doesn’t seem the be all end all of this summer festival, the first of its kind in Kaatsbaan’s 30 years as a cultural park. From the performances to Brandon Stirling Baker’s light-and-sound installation in a rustic barn to the peace of being surrounded by so much open space and air, the festival is not only about live dance. It’s a package. The best choreographic moments came in the dancers’ simple yet courtly walks across the grass to the stage.

Kaatsbaan’s artistic director, Stella Abrera, and its executive director, Sonja Kostich, aren’t messing around when it comes to safety, and that was comforting, too, at this socially distanced performance. The experience included frantically filling out the health check survey in the car while thinking hard about the questions: Was that a touch of a sore throat this morning?

I loved the elegant firmness of the handwritten signs telling us to wear masks; the raised stage that seemed like it was dropped from the sky onto a field; and the optional post-performance walk, on the grounds of what was originally a farm, with live music (instead of a meandering or self-congratulatory post-performance talk).

Read the full article here.

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly’s daring BalletX taps choreographers around the world for subscription-based film festival

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By Ellen Dunkel

21 July 2020

Nutcracker performances have been canceled, theaters sit empty, and dancers all over the world are wondering how to salvage their careers.

But BalletX artistic director Christine Cox has not let coronavirus prevent her company from leaping into the future.

“There was a panic moment,” Cox said. “At first you’re managing the crises by shutting down your performances, which is something we did early. And then slowly as the season was developing, in my mind, [there was] this idea of going big.”

The plan, which Cox announced Tuesday morning, is a new series launching Sept. 10 celebrating the company’s 15th anniversary with world premieres by 15 choreographers. She sees the season in terms of a subscription-based film festival with nine shorts and six features.

The shorts will be dance films presented on a new virtual platform hosted on the company’s website called BalletX Beyond. The features are intended to be performed live in the spring or summer, depending on public health concerns, but they, too, may be turned into films, if necessary.

Read the full story here.

The Observer: Troy Powell, Artistic Director of Ailey II, Has Been Fired for Sexual Misconduct

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By 

20 July 2020

Troy Powell has been removed from his position as Artistic Director of Ailey II following an independent investigation into alleged acts of sexual misconduct. This investigation was launched in early June after two videos accusing Powell of inappropriate behavior were posted on TikTok, the popular video sharing app.

The first video involved dancers dropping scraps of paper as a message appeared: “When you wanna be in Ailey II. But guys gotta sleep with Troy Powell.” The second video involved an unidentified dancer accusing the Ailey organization of housing a known sexual predator. After these videos were removed from TikTok, the Ailey organization placed Powell on leave of absence. His name and most-recently choreographed ballet were also stricken from Ailey’s June 11th Virtual Spirit Gala. The gala was an online substitute for the company’s traditional spring gala event, which Powell choreographed last year using students from the Ailey School.

Online outrage to the allegations included denouncements from Ryan Houston, a former apprentice with Ailey II—who urged dancers via an Instagram post to speak up about their experiences with Powell—and from Addison Ector, a former student of the Ailey School and soloist with Complexions Ballet.

In an Instagram video that was posted on June 29, Ector alleged that during his time as a student at the Ailey School, Powell sent him a text message containing an inappropriate photo of his anatomy. In Ector’s recollection, he was interrogated about the incident by a male director of the Ailey School. After being asked if Powell’s face was in the picture—it was not—Ector stated that he was told, “Well we can’t really confirm that it was him or not.” A Title XI investigation was not launched on Ector’s behalf. Instead, he continued to interact with Powell during the remainder of his time as a student.

Read the full article here.