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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

New York Times: At City Ballet, Two Cheers for Pam Tanowitz

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(And 2 more for Brian Seibert)

By Brian Seibert

3 May 2019

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk of a “new era” or “new chapter” at New York City Ballet. At the company’s spring gala at the David H. Koch Theater on Thursday, both phrases cropped up in preshow speeches by the new artistic director, Jonathan Stafford, and the new associate artistic director, Wendy Whelan. These speeches were far from lively, but fresh ideas have been emerging in other forms. The fruit of one was on the program: a commission for the choreographer Pam Tanowitz.

For many years, especially as ballet companies came under increasing pressure to identify and nurture female choreographers, City Ballet’s failure to call upon Ms. Tanowitz was puzzling. It’s true that she’s an outsider to ballet, but she knows her ballet history, and her proven talent in discovering drama and wit through formal invention puts her right in line with the company’s best traditions.

So it’s about time that she be given a shot. Yet, as it turns out, the commission is also a little ahead of schedule. Originally, the plan was for Ms. Tanowitz to make a work for the fall, but when another choreographer pulled out, Ms. Tanowitz — suddenly in-demand and busier than ever before in her career — stepped in.

Might that fast-forwarding account for why her new “Bartok Ballet” feels both overstuffed and undercooked? Its plentiful virtues are characteristic, starting with a wonderfully multidimensional use of stage space. In this ensemble piece, two dancers might oscillate in and out of a relationship intermittently identifiable as a duet, while someone else, way in the rear, lies on her back, raising a bent leg, and yet another dancer peeks out from a forward wing.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

WWD: New York City Ballet Gala Seen as Turning Point for Change

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By Misty White Sidell

3 May 2019

The New York City Ballet held its annual spring gala on Thursday evening — the first to be presided over by a new leadership administration.

In late February, Jonathan Stafford and Wendy Whelan — both former principal dancers at the company — were named as artistic director and associate artistic director, respectively. Stafford had been serving as interim director since June 2018, when his predecessor Peter Martins resigned amid allegations of abuse, following a 35-year run at the head of the historical troupe.

This passing of the baton — only the third such change in City Ballet’s 71-year history — was embroiled in scandals relating to male dancers’ and administrations’ conduct. Thus, the company — known in recent years for its flashy artist and fashion design collaboration — appears to be taking a quiet moment to reassess. Its gala last night was not attended by celebrities and the company has no imminent plans for an international tour.

In the weeks since their appointment, Stafford and Whelan have been outlining plans to modernize the company. As previously outlined to WWD, Stafford intends to implement new protocols to ensure that the City Ballet-affiliated School of American Ballet becomes increasingly diverse, thus providing the company with a class of dancers that better reflects the outside world. Whelan, the company’s first female director, hopes to make City Ballet a sanctuary for female choreographers and reverse years of patriarchal rule.

Read the full article in WWD.

The Guardian: The White Crow review – Ralph Fiennes brings poise to ballet biopic

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By Peter Bradshaw

20 March 2019

The White Crow is a watchable, serviceable movie telling the story of ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev and his sensational escape to the west in the early 60s at the age of 23, while on his first European tour. Dance is represented as a transcendental experience of success, of leaving behind the past and reinventing the future. Like Billy Elliot’s defection from his working-class childhood, Nureyev’s flight involves crises of loyalty with family and community. These struggles are, however, a little enigmatic and opaque with Rudolf, as portrayed by the Ukrainian ballet star and first-time actor Oleg Ivenko. Ralph Fiennes directs and gives a performance of spaniel-eyed sadness as Nureyev’s dance teacher and mentor Alexander Pushkin, with whose wife Xenia (Chulpan Khamatova), Nureyev is to have a sentimental education.

David Hare adapts Julie Kavanagh’s biography of Nureyev, skilfully sketching in his past life via flashbacks of childhood and early manhood as a tempestuous young student in Leningrad. The present-tense action takes place in Paris, as Nureyev and the west thrill each other to the bone. Nureyev finds a well-connected Parisian ally in Clara Saint (Adèle Exarchopoulos), whom the film promotes almost to quasi-girlfriend status, while representing Nureyev’s gay identity pretty obliquely compared with his straight experiences with Xenia. Finally at the airport, Nureyev realises it’s now or never. He has to defect.

Read the article in The Guardian.

New York Times: The Choreographer Pam Tanowitz’s Dance Card Is Overflowing

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By Gia Kourlas

1 May 2019

This spring, no one has asked more of Pam Tanowitz than Pam Tanowitz. She is making more dances than she ever has in her life.

“I’m nervous, and I’m worried, and I stay up at night,” she said in a recent interview at New York City Ballet, where she was rehearsing her latest. “I have so many steps in my head.”

That’s fitting. A modern dance choreographer, Ms. Tanowitz, 49, has a flair for inventing sophisticated steps then turning them inside out. While she may appear to be her usual wisecracking self — she told her City Ballet dancers to “do it quickly again before I get arrested,” referring to the company’s tight rehearsal schedule — she fully grasps the pressure of her situation.

Her approach is to take it one dance at a time. First came a new work for the Martha Graham Dance Company. Next was one for Paul Taylor’s troupe — that will have its premiere in June, along with her first outdoor site-specific piece, conceived with Sara Mearns, the City Ballet principal. Later this month, Ms. Tanowitz will unveil another new work at the Kennedy Center in Washington as part of Ballet Across America, featuring members of both Dance Theater of Harlem and Miami City Ballet. Then there’s her company’s coming tour to London to present “Four Quartets,” her acclaimed work inspired by the T.S. Eliot poems.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

Ashley Bouder at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU

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As a 2019 Resident Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, Ashley Bouder will be exploring gender fluidity in the pas de deux. The Center wrote:

Gender Fluidity in the Pas de Deux

At The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, Bouder will create choreography for a film that will showcase ballet’s potential to demonstrate gender fluidity. Although we associate the pas de deux with a male/female identity, Bouder wonders what would transpire if we stripped away gender and made the dance about the connection of two people in a specific place and time.

Bouder, a strong advocate for women in dance, founded the Ashley Bouder Project, which “actively recruits women and marginalized individuals to give them voices in creative and leadership roles in the dance and arts world.”

Learn more about the Ashley Bouder Project here.

Learn more about The Center for Ballet and the arts at NYU here.

Pointe Magazine: Justin Peck and Pam Tanowitz World Premieres at NYCB, Canadian Premiere of Septime Webre’s “Wizard of Oz,” And More!

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By Chava Lansky

29 April 2019

New York City Ballet’s spring season continues this week with two world premieres, presented as part of the company’s annual spring gala on May 2. The first, by Justin Peck, is titled Bright and is set to music by Mark Dancigers. The second is by postmodern choreographer Pam Tanowitz, who will be making her NYCB debut. Set to music by Béla Bartók, Tanowitz’s work is aptly titled Bartók Ballet. The premieres, which will both return for four additional dates later this season, share a program with George Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3.

Read the full article on Pointe Magazine’s blog.

London on the Inside: BIRMINGHAM ROYAL BALLET IS COMING TO LONDON

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By Christina Dean

29 April 2019

Calling all ballet fans! Birmingham Royal Ballet, the country’s leading classical ballet touring company, is coming to London in June with two very different shows in tow.

[Un]leashed is the first show the company is bringing to town. It’s actually made up of three short ballets all courtesy of female choreographers. Jessica Lang’s Lyric Pieces is a playful piece in which the dancers manipulate giant concertina props to form and reform the scenery. Ruth Brill has reimagined Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, putting a modern spin on the traditional story by using street dance and spoken word to influence classical ballet. Finally, Didy Veldman’s Sense of Time is a new commission with the latest score by Gabriel Prokofiev (yes, the same Prokofiev family) which looks at how perceptions of time have changed in our modern world.

Read the full article on London on the Inside.

Kelowna Daily Courier: Ballet Kelowna hits spring with three premieres

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By JP Squire

1 May 2019

Spring has always represented the re-awakening of nature so Ballet Kelowna is celebrating that fresh beginning with three premieres of re-imagined 100-year-old works at 7:30 p.m. on May 3-4 at Kelowna Community Theatre.

The presentation of Spring, following Autumn on Nov. 16-17 and Winter on Feb. 1, wraps up the 2018-19 season with works from a trio of esteemed Canadian female choreographers who will introduce refreshing takes on works by Igor Stravinsky, originally commissioned for Paris’ Ballet Russes between 1910 and 1913. Tickets are available at: balletkelowna.ca.

Ballet Kelowna artistic director Simone Orlando’s Rite of Spring, Heather Dotto’s Petrushka and Amber Funk Barton’s Firebird all feature contemporary dance rather than going back to the original material from more than a century ago. The fourth work is the Kelowna ballet company’s premiere of Spring from one of Canada’s top emerging talents, Alysa Pires, creator of the effervescent fan-favourite Mambo.

A Studio Series presentation at the 2283 Leckie Rd. studio and headquarters on Thursday teased about 100 young people with the company’s goal of attracting a younger audience, not only to ballet but other artistic endeavours in the Okanagan.

Dancers highlighted segments from the four exquisite pieces, each distinctly different from the other, yet each mesmerizing. The choreographers each found different ways for dancers to interconnect through intertwining bodies, innovative lifts, and intricate individual and ensemble movements that portray a wide range of emotions and plot development.

Read the full article in the Kelowna Daily Courier.

UVA Class of 2019: Ballet Dancer Soars as a Leader in Public Policy, Volunteer Work

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More than once while Sarah Alexander was growing up, her ballet teachers thought she should limit school and focus on a professional dance career. But the young dancer, who began taking lessons at the age of 3, was determined to figure out how to pursue both school and dance.

Next month, the fourth-year New Orleans native will walk the Lawn in Final Exercises as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate with a degree from the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Through Batten projects and her volunteer work with Madison House’s Cavs in the Classroom, and even in ballet, she has learned a set of leadership skills that combine organization and attention to detail with a dancer’s confidence and grace.

Since stepping on Grounds, she has been a member of the Rhapsody Ballet Ensemble, the only student-run dance group that performs “en pointe” – on the tips of those square-toed shoes that lace up to the ankle.

Read the full article on the UVA website.

Philanthropy Women: Helping Women Dancers Take the Lead in Choreography

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By Julia Travers

26 April 2019

While women fill most of the shoes in ballet, leadership positions are still dominated by men, especially in choreography and artistic direction roles. A nonprofit called the Dance Data Project (DDP) aims to help more women in dance keep up to date with choreographic opportunities and ascend the ballet leadership ladder. With this goal in mind, in April 2019, DDP released a reporton contemporary opportunities in choreography, along with monthly spreadsheets and calendar reminders of global deadlines. Earlier in 2019, it also published research on salary by gender for leaders in ballet, finding notable imbalances in favor of men, especially in artistic direction.

DDP’s overarching goal is to raise gender equality awareness in ballet through research, advocacy and other programs. It also serves as a resource for other “artists of merit,” including photographers, lighting and costume professionals, set designers, and composers. DDP founder and president, Liza Yntema, is also a personal sponsor of the American Ballet Theatre’s project to support female choreographers called Women’s Movement and a similar initiative from the Boston Ballet called ChoreograpHER.

DDP’s new calendar of opportunities includes ballet choreographic scholarships, fellowships and competitions, which it explains are training pipelines for lucrative choreographer and artistic director positions. As part of its related research efforts, DDP conducted a listening tour of ballet companies in the U.S.

“We heard from ballet company artistic directors and senior staff that women just don’t apply in the same numbers as men, often because they are unaware of what is out there. They do not have the network that men enjoy,” Yntema said in a statement. The directors also said men tend to be more forward and self-promotional during the application process.

Read the full article on Philanthropy Women’s blog.