Lady Gaga and the Bolshoi Ballet

Yes, that’s right. Lady Gaga and the Bolshoi Ballet are performing on the same stage, the same night, in the same piece – at the 30th Anniversary Gala of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles on November 14th. This partnership is so obvious that I’m ashamed I didn’t see it coming. Perhaps it’s standard for Hollywood celebrities to attend gala events for LA arts and cultural institutions, but if I lived in La-la land, I’d be eager to see this unique pairing of a young, outspoken pop star and Russia’s most disciplined, classically trained ballet dancers performing in a contemporary art space. The outcome of this overly ambitious event: unpredictable.

Consciousness As A Dance

This week, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival will present the innovative choreographer William Forsythe and his Frankfurt-based company in the US premiere of Forsythe’s Decreation. Inspired by an essay by poet Anne Carson, Forsythe used Carson’s writing as a starting point to explore, in choreographic terms, the poet’s thesis of the dissolution of the self in order to create space for something new. According to The Forsythe Company’s website, “Sound is transformed, weeps and soars through the throats, the bodies, which move in a constant, oblique tension.” In Decreation, the dancers interact with onstage cameras, their own projected images, and one another as they explore the progression of the soul.

In addition to seeing The Forsythe Company at BAM, the public has a chance to see William Forsythe in conversation at the New York Public Library on Friday, October 9th at 1 PM. Forsythe and the cognitive scientist Alva Noe will discuss consciousness as a kind of dance, as something that we engage in as opposed to something that occurs inside our brain.

The Power Of Propulsion, Wicked Movements

The performances are provocative, political and personal, where a surprisingly familiar world is portrayed. The musicians and dancers play on stage together. A combination of energetic and sometimes staccato movement complements the percussive score in Uprising, while haunting strings and powerful drums dominate the activity in In your Rooms. The Times’ Debra Craine says that, "Shechter’s piece lifts the lid on secrets, peering into the dark recesses where we hide our fears and insecurities, our most private emotions." Sound powerful? It is, just watch for yourself. Simply wicked!!!

Ballet Is Sexy

The publicity Wheeldon has received from The New York Times, New York Magazine, the BBC and others has consistently emphasized that Wheeldon seeks to prove that ballet=sexy. Most people think of ballet as tutus and a rather dull presentation of meaningless movement. Morphoses is pure prowess of movement and the ability of that movement to pique a viewer’s aesthetic interest and emotional reaction.

In Program One- There Where She Loved, Vicissitude and Slingerland
I'm never surprised by the ingenuity of Wheeldon’s works, particularly the creativity he brings to partnering. What was surprising was seeing Dance of the Hours, the “mockery ballet” danced by Ashley Bouder and Gonzalo Garcia. This is what most non-aficionados probably associate with ballet- cheesy smiles and bejeweled tutus. The piece ends with Gonzalo doing a bunch of grande pirouettes à la seconde with Bouder circling him with piquè turns. This is the ballet equivalent of a novel ending with “and they lived happily ever after” in that it’s trivial and tired.

The next and last piece of the program, Fools’ Paradise confirmed that yes, its inclusion was paramount. The juxtaposition between Hours and Paradise proved that ballet can be unquestionably sexy. Paradise began with shiny paper falling behind the scrim, eerily illuminated by boom lights. The movement was delicate and profound and ended with all nine phenomenally beautiful dancers attached to one another in a pyramid like sculpture of legs, pointe shoes, arms and fingers, all lifted and interlaced. Joby Talbot’s ‘Dying Swan’ orchestration added an overwhelming elegiac quality to the entire piece.

Wheeldon proved with Paradise that ballet is not just sexy, ballet can be a patois more powerful than language. Watching a beautiful ballet like Paradise can feel like finding your center when it’s otherwise lost. It can be an expression of sentiments so intensely intimate they cannot be expressed to family, a close friend, or a lover. This is dance. Wheeldon undoubtedly accomplishes this in his ballets and the debut of Morphoses is not only an extraordinary success but a true ‘Revolution in Tights.’

Taipei Gala

Directed by Tzar-Shing Wang, the third International Ballet Star Gala has announced an impressive line-up of dancers from major companies around the world. The program offers a variety of classical pas de deux such as White Swan with ENB's Daria Klimentova and Stuttgart's Friedman Vogel(who also performs a Manon pas de deux) and Copelia with Bridgett Zehr and Zdenek Konvalina(who will also dance Prokofiev Pas de Deux), as well as more contemporary pieces like Forsynth's In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated pey performed by Sofiane Sylve and Simon Ball (also presenting Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux).
Fireworks are guaranteed courtesy of Ashlely Bouder and Daniil Simkin in Flames of Paris and Le Corsaire, while excerpts of two David Dawson ballets-Giselle and Grey Area, will be danced by Yumiko Takeshima and Raphael Coumes-Marquet from Dresden. Elisa Carillo Cabrera and Mikhail Kaniskin will give a taste of Kazimir's Colours and the Grand Pas de Deux, while the Paris Opera's Isabelle Ciaravola and Herve Moreau will offer duets from La Dame aux camelias and Mahler's Third Symphony. The gala takes place in Taipei's National Theatre on August 22, 2009. www.balletstargala.com

Why Boarding School?

As intensives wind down at the end of summer, you may be dreading the return home, where you get to dance only a couple of hours a day. What's the next step when you are ready to immerse yourself in your training full-time? Top ballet boarding schools can offer world renowned faculty, intense schedules, state-of-the-art facilities and the company of peers with a shared passion. But what are the factors to weigh before deciding if training away from home is a good idea for you?
For starters, ask yourself:
Does the school feed into a company that I would like to dance for?
Who are the faculty?
What percentage of students dance professionally after graduation?
What percent goes to college dance programs?
What is the academic program like?
If you want to be a professional dancer, boarding school can wipe years off your training time. You are immersed in an environment with people who are extremely focused, students who want to be dancers, rather than students whose parents want them to dance. Oftentimes the ones who have had to fight the hardest to be there are the ones who are most prepared to leave home. They have already dealt with the resistance and feel strongly enough to have made it there. If you are passionate, committed, open-minded and learn everything you can, you will be successful. It's the best way to keep all your doors open

Breaking The Ballet Mold

ONE by choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. An original work created for Drew Jacoby and Rubi Pronk. This is an excerpt of a performance at Dance Salad in Houston, Texas.

An Evening of Dance

VAIL, Colorado
The International Evening of Dance was organized and introduced by Damian Woetzel, the artistic director of the Vail International Dance Festival. The dancers, some of them European and Asian, had come from all over North and South America to perform.Covering a wide span of dance: Brazilian capoeira; Argentine tango; American modern dance from a span of eight decades; and ballet from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Almost anybody would have learned something about dance’s range from watching. Each proved it was not just international caliber worthy of performance in any of the leading dance capitals also having international significance, with new partnerships and debuts that would please the hearts of fans thousands of miles away.

Jeanine Can Dance!

Congratulations to 18-year-old Miami native Jeanine Mason for winning Season 5 of "So You Think You Can Dance!"
I have to admit, I was rooting for Jeanine since day one. Not only does she excel technically at every style thrown at her, but she also has amazing presence and a sincere emotional connection to her movement. I always considered her the most marketable dancer due to her versatility and personality.
But her best quality, in my opinion, is her strength and control. Dancing side by side with Kayla in the finale it became apparent just how strong she is. While Kayla has beautiful lines and extensions, she has a tendency to look slightly sloppy and willowy, especially next to Jeanine who is clean and compact. That strength really came in handy when she did that unbelievably controlled turn in attitude front and then sustained it at the end during her solo. At that moment I was 100% positive she deserved to win.
And I have to give her an extra shout out for being a fellow South Florida native! It's about time Miami got on the national dance radar.
Congrats again, Jeanine, and all the best in your dance career and beyond!

Merce Cunningham, Futuristic Dance Marvel, Dies

The Cunningham Dance Foundation announced the death of the revolutionary American choreographer. He died Sunday night at his home in Manhattan. He was 90.
He made people rethink the essence of dance and choreography. Mr. Cunningham had the ability to pose questions making a ponderous spectacle of movement, to the very end. Even when it became known that he was fading, Mr. Cunningham was still creating dances in his head.
In his works, independence was central. His dancers were often alone even in duets or ensembles, and music and design would act as environments, sometimes hostile ones. His movement, startling in its mixture of staccato and legato elements, and unusually intense in its use of torso, legs and feet, abounded in non sequiturs.
In his final years, while still known as avant-garde, he was almost routinely hailed as the world’s greatest living choreographer. Mr. Cunningham had also been a nonpareil dancer.
International fame came to him before national fame. In London and Paris Mr. Cunningham was widely celebrated as the creator of a new classicism, as one of the most remarkable theater artists of his day. And it was in Europe that he was most acclaimed right through to this decade, with sold-out Cunningham seasons in Paris at the Theatre de la Ville or the Paris Opera House. Yet he was always a creature of New York. He absorbed aspects of ordinary pedestrian movement, the natural world and city life. He re-examined the relationship between dance and its sound accompaniment. Mr. Cunningham, along with Graham and Balanchine, made New York the world capital of choreography. Mr. Cunningham’s most celebrated and revolutionary achievement, shared with the composer John Cage, his collaborator and companion, was to have dance and music created independently of each other. His choreography showed that dance was principally about itself, not music, while often suggesting that it could also be about many other things. Ambiguity and poetry were among Mr. Cunningham’s favorite words when talking about choreography. So was theater. Wit and humor abounded in his work. His conversation was full of laughter and wry anecdotes. Partly because dance was the main subject of his choreography, and partly because he often created dances requiring virtuoso skill, he did more than any other choreographer to demonstrate that dance can be classical while being in most ways far from ballet.
His animal-like qualities of grace and intensity were as remarkable as his jump. His dance vocabulary owed much too both Graham modern dance, especially its use of the back, and to ballet, mainly its use of the legs and feet. Much of Mr. Cunningham’s wit arose out of his concentration on pure form. An unpredictable change of rhythm or direction, a brisk figure of nifty footwork could provoke the same smiles and laughter as the jokes in a Haydn symphony.
Mr. Cunningham was a man of secrets. Few people knew he had taught himself Russian or had written his own translation of “The Bear” by Chekhov. Mr. Cunningham often spoke and wrote movingly about the nature of dance and would laugh about its maddening impermanence. “You have to love dancing to stick to it,” he once wrote. “It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.”

American Ballet Theater- Romance, Romeo and Juilet

This is the final week in American Ballet Theater's summer season at The Metropolitan Opera House. Marcelo Gomes, a Brazilian principal dancer, is the intoxicating romantic Romeo that has somehow surpassed himself yet again. Mr. Gomes unlocks surpressed qualities in his partners that rids their fears by creating a world so tangible that they forget there is even an audience, they become enveloped the role, the become Juliet.

On Monday night, his partner was Diana Vishneva, one of the company’s worthiest ballerinas. Ms. Vishneva’s Juliet starts out innocently willful and ends up somewhere in the wild. She has a way of wilting, as if air were slowing escaping her body, until, arching her spine and throwing her long arms back with uncalculated force. She looks as though she was gliding threw air, doing so with ease and grace.

Prokofiev’s music soars while emotion builds in a charged glance or a realization, creates windows for individual touches. As Romeo, Mr. Gomes seizes those moments, transforming a flirty swagger into grown-up sensuality. To say this performance was outstanding would be an understatement.

Pina Bausch: The Ultimate Wordly Choreographer

Inspired by her travels, Pina Bausch choreographed gorgeous expressive neo-expressionistic dance. The elusive choreographer said, in an interview last year, that her inspiration came from her many travels. She was known for works showing men and women engaged in endless, often violent, power struggles. Alastair Macaulay wrote that her work could be “strikingly picturesque, always fluid in its comings and goings” as it “switches between episodes of sensual impulsiveness; coy, catwalk like audience-awareness; rushing scenes of harrowing need or anxiety; and diverse aspects of melancholia.”

Because dance does not use words, and much of its spell lies in aspects of contrast, rhythm and coordination, it is only occasionally taken seriously as drama. But, the productions by Ms. Bausch always made an immediate impact as theater. The art of dance will be diminished as a result of her death. No single label will do. Ms. Bausch was not just a green artist protesting the desecration of the environment, though that was a powerful element in her works, or a feminist depicting the opposition between women’s pain and their social conformism, which was evident. Nor was she an expressionist emitting rage at aspects of the socio-political status quo, though the intensity of that feeling was unmistakable. In some of her pieces she seemed to be celebrating the charm of the world, not just mourning its erosion.
And, Ms. Bausch was often very comical. She was a theater poet and the dance world will be monumentally smaller without her. Much thanks to Ms. Bausch, who gave so much of herself to the world of dance. She generously unraveled the inner landscape of her mind onto the stage for the world to witness. She is a true inspiration.

The Thrill of Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson altered dance forever. I can remember pleading with my mother to let me go to the 'Bad' concert when I was six years old. Unfortunately, my mother never budged on her decision to hold me back at such a young age. It didn't stop me from writing letters to him asking how he executed the moonwalk or how he made several revolutions from two feet, he never wrote back if you're wondering. I'm almost a hundred percent positive my mother mailed it to my grandmother’s address!
Ah, Michael Jackson was legendary. He was to me, superhuman. Michael was true pioneer to choreography as we know it now. Any choreographer or dancer that had the incredible honor of working with him, let alone occupy the same space as him, basked in his majesty decades after and now that he has passed attains an even higher rank of status. Perhaps it was how Michael gave his all from the beginning. He knew his gift and how to share it. People received it just the way he knew he could deliver it. Never less than 120%, he reveled in his vision through one of his outlets, dance. Music and dance was his venting tool for the internal battles he fought as a child. I guess I related to him and how he used the internal dialogue as fuel for his fire. I too used my inner and outer conflicts as ammunition. I will always remember the many ways Michael Jackson influenced dance. And more importantly, the ways he influenced me.
Jackson was one of a kind, a visionary, a genius and most notably, an icon. Rhythm exploded through his veins and manifested into stunning artistry. He was the staple performer of my generation. Michael Jackson will always be the king of pop, the king of music/dance videos, and the king catalyst that triggered inventive and creative concepts that never failed to unveil a story through his wicked choreographic flare. RIP Michael, you will be missed and celebrated for eternity.

More than dance

Sylvie Guillem executes William Forsynthe's choreoghraphy "In the Middle Somewhat Elevated" flawlessly and undeniably effective. Guillem captures the essence of space and time and most of all, the vision that Forsynthe intended. I've seen this piece re staged on many dancers and it always falls short. This style is rare and few dancers have the movement quality to encapsulate such form and fluidity. There is more to dance than just steps and counts and placement, it's the feeling one gets when they witness the intangible air of euphoric delight.
I tried finding this variation clip without the awkward beginning. It looks like it was cut out of a backstage documentary or private video years ago. It makes me laugh actually. Sylvie looks like she is being attacked by a white fuzzy Muppet dog. Regardless, this clip is breathtaking. At least it takes mine away each and every time I play it.