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
Dance Magazine: Kyle Abraham Is Dance Magazine’s Guest Editor This Week
By Jennifer Stahl
16 November 2020
During my first year at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, there was a grad student in my ballet class who mystified me. At the end of almost every across-the-floor combination, he’d drop the classical positions and improvise for an additional count of eight, mixing hip-hop swagger with contemporary abandon. In ballet class! As a sheltered bunhead who’d always strictly followed the teacher’s combinations like they were The Law, watching him find his own groove in the corner blew my mind. Partly because it felt so rebellious, but also because his movement was simply mesmerizing to watch.
That guy was Kyle Abraham. And even back then in 2003, he was already making his own rules.
He would go on to win a MacArthur “genius” grant 10 years later for his bold, haunting works about police brutality and violence, intimacy and vulnerability. And he endeared himself to the dance community by using that money to help fund his A.I.M dancers’ 52-week contracts (with health insurance and vacation days—even through a pandemic). Then he became even more beloved by refusing to be presented on any rep program that didn’t also include a work by a female choreographer.
I’m thrilled to announce that this week, he’s Dance Magazine‘s first-ever guest editor for our website, taking over starting today with stories that were all his ideas. Stay tuned for pieces about what it’s like to join a new company during the pandemic, what goes into titling a dance work, how directors choose rep, what happens to a choreographer after they “emerge” into mid-career and more. It’s an exciting lineup with lots of insight for anyone in the dance field.
Read the full story here.
The Guardian: Royal Ballet Live: Within the Golden Hour review – sheer, ravishing class from top to pointed toe
15 November 2020
Planned for a live audience then switched to a streamed show, the Royal Ballet’s latest gala is pretty much an all-killer no-filler programme with a company of dancers who, if anything, seem to have benefited from their hiatus away from the stage.
Valentino Zucchetti gets the honour of opening the show with a world premiere, Scherzo. Zucchetti has been choreographing for some time without making huge waves, but this confident piece of neoclassicism shows he knows what he’s doing. It’s set to Rachmaninov, as, coincidentally, is the evening’s other new-ish piece, Cathy Marston’s In Our Wishes. Extracted from her ballet Three Sisters, this pas de deux was debuted at the Royal’s first post-lockdown performance last month. I found it more compelling this time round, perhaps thanks to the dancers (Romany Pajdak and Calvin Richardson), perhaps because the camera’s lens brought us closer to Pajdak’s haunted expressions. In a short duet they find gravitas, stoicism, desperation and great love between two people who just can’t melt the barrier between them.
Elsewhere, we get to explore the company’s history, with three Frederick Ashton works, including Dance of the Blessed Spirits, originally made for the opera Orpheus in 1953. William Bracewell dances the solo as if it’s a stream of consciousness. Full of feeling but never OTT, his dancing has an honesty about it that’s very moreish. Ashton’s divine Monotones II from 1965 is a trio that depends on absolute control and synchrony, plus Melissa Hamilton’s ability to do vertical splits – toe pointed to ceiling, head clasped to knee – while Reece Clarke and Nicol Edmonds rotate her on pointe. It’s extremely exposed, and skilfully pulled off. Staying in the 60s, Yasmine Naghdi and Edmonds bring seriousness and a scrupulous precision to the stark beauty of Kenneth MacMillan’s Concerto, the combination of choreography, Shostakovich’s music and glowing sunset backdrop quite ravishing.
Read the full story here.
The Free Lance- Star: Fredericksburg-area dance studios struggle during pandemic
By Adele Uphaus
15 November 2020
Khalia Harris said dance saved her life.
Growing up as a military child, she moved often and her father was frequently deployed. She struggled with sadness and a sense of not belonging anywhere—except for at the studio where she took dance lessons.
“Dance was really a healing thing for me, and it changed the trajectory of my life,” Harris said.
Her own experience with the therapeutic and community-building power of a local dance studio inspired Harris to open Umbiance Center for the Performing Arts in Stafford County five years ago.
“I wanted to bring that healing opportunity to other children, especially those who are at-risk, have special needs and that sort of thing,” Harris said.
Umbiance students have performed at many community events, such as the annual Martin Luther King Day celebration at James Monroe High School and the first-ever Black History Month celebration at Brock Road Elementary School last year.
In 2019, the studio received a Best of Fredericksburg award for best area dance school.
Harris also established a nonprofit—Leading Education Arts Program, or LEAP—which has provided scholarships to Umbiance for economically disadvantaged children.
Read the full story here.
People: Debbie Allen Was Rejected from Dance School Due to Her Body Type
By Christina Dugan
11 November 2020
Throughout the years, Debbie Allen has found a way to turn rejection into strength.
In this week’s issue of PEOPLE, the Grey’s Anatomy actress and producer opens up about the years of tears, laughter and sweat that led her to where she is now.
“I grew up with a lot of ideas about myself,” says Allen, 70. “I always wanted to dance. I don’t remember ever not dancing. I used to sit as a little girl, contemplating the stars and the universe. And feeling myself. I used to do performances in the backyard to the birds in the trees. I had a sense that I was in a big world and that there was a place for me. I couldn’t articulate it as a child; I just knew the joy and the spirit of dance. It was inside of me. It was alive in me.”
Growing up in Houston, Texas, Allen — who found success on the movie and subsequent TV show Fame in the ’80s — experienced racism and hate, but remained determined to overcome the many challenges she faced.
Later, when she “went to the North Carolina School of the Arts to audition to go there for college,” Allen recalls, her dreams came to a sudden halt.
“I had been so well trained by that time by the Houston Ballet Foundation. I got there early, and I watched the auditions, I watched class. I was like, ‘Oh, I know all of this. I’ll be good.’ I got to my audition [group] and they used me to demonstrate,” says Allen.
Unfortunately, Allen says she was not accepted into the school because of her “body type.”
Read the full article here.
We-Ha.com: Getting ‘Up Close’ with Ballet Theatre Company
Article submitted by reader
10 November 2020
Ballet Theatre Company of West Hartford is getting “up close” while socially distancing this fall season with its digital performance season titled, “Up Close.”
Two brand new works choreographed by BTC’s Artistic Director, Stephanie Dattellas, will premiere featuring BTC’s Season Dancers, guest dancer Roman Mejia of New York City Ballet, and select members of BTC’s Corps de Ballet. “Up Close: Part 1 – Autumn Aurora” will premiere on Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. followed by “Up Close: Part 2 – Flashes” which will premiere on Nov. 28 at 7 p.m. – both on a digital platform.
Autumn Aurora is a neo-classical ballet set to Vivaldi’s “Autumn” concerto from The Four Seasons. The pre-recorded performance will feature footage taken outside in Winchester, CT, capturing the beautiful and appropriate fall foliage as the backdrop for this ode to the season.
The ballet includes three movements: “Allegro,” “Adagio,” and “La Caccia” – that celebrate change in the colors of leaves and the transition of seasons from summer to autumn. “Allegro” will feature a pas de deux that highlights Vivaldi’s intricate instrumentation and use of repetition playing between the two dancers. “Adagio” features a duet of two female Season Dancers portraying the slower, monotone music complimented in the reflection of autumn colors in a nearby pond. Lastly, “La Caccia” features a sextet of selected BTC Corps de Ballet dancers that showcase power, unison and fleeting moments. Autumn Aurora is sponsored in part by Reid and Riege Attorneys.
Read the full article here.
Dance Magazine: From Stage to Screen: Andrea Miller Turns One of Her Beloved Works Into an Epic Dance Film
By Jennifer Stahl
5 November 2020
Now that most dance performances have migrated online, we’re seeing a lot of work that was never meant to be experienced through a laptop screen. Some are streamed in an attempt to capture that thrill of being “live.” Others are filmed from multiple angles so we get shots of the dancers up close. But most choreography that was created for the theater still feels like it would work best…in a theater.
Choreographer Andrea Miller is taking a different approach. Her company, Gallim, had long had an engagement planned at the University of Minnesota’s Northrop theater for this month, and director of programming Kristen Brogdon was committed to finding a way to make it happen. So they started brainstorming options. “I think Kristen was really quick to say, ‘I would love to see BOAT‘—one of the pieces scheduled to tour—’turned into a film,’ ” says Miller.
Miller first made BOAT in 2016 in response to forced migration, exploring the idea of searching for home. “One of the things we wanted our North to be was how having connection is so deeply fundamental to us, and how the loss of that is tragic. Losing someone, or being pulled apart is one of the biggest strains in life,” she says. “It seems like now is a time where that’s very clear to us all.”
There’s also a perpetual presence of a TV and static in the piece; Miller describes it as “having this constant weight of tragedy chewed into bite-size content.”
Although she’d taken part in a handful of film projects before COVID-19 hit, Miller had never before made her own video productions. Then she was commissioned to make a dance film with Ballet Hispánico, then for Works & Process Artists Virtual Commissions, both times working with filmmaker and director Ben Stamper, whom she’d met four years earlier at Grace Farms.
“When you have an opportunity to work with a filmmaker and a director, it’s entering a new creative space,” says Miller. “There’s so much interesting storytelling and perspective that Ben brings to his work that I wanted to open the door for BOAT to become its own work on film. It has connection of course to the original choreography, but isn’t trying to be a re-creation of it.”
Read the full article here.
