Misty Copeland opened the 2018 Dance Magazine Awards. Photo by Christopher Duggan.
What does it mean to be human? Well, many things. But if you were at the Dance Magazine Awards last night, you could argue that to be human is to dance. Speeches about the powerful humanity of our art form were backed up withperformances byincredible dancers hailingfrom everywhere from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago to Miami City Ballet.
Misty Copeland started off the celebration. A self-professed "Dance Magazine connoisseur from the age of 13," she not only spoke about how excited she was to be in a room full of dancers, but also—having just come from Dance Theatre of Harlem's memorial for Arthur Mitchell—what she saw as their duty: "We all in this room hold a responsibility to use this art for good," she said. "Dance unifies, so let's get to work."
Genshaft in Ratmansky's From Foreign Lands. Photo by Erik Tomasson, courtesy of San Francisco Ballet
Dana Genshaft was a beloved dancer in the San Francisco Ballet for 15 years, rising to the rank of soloist. Some of her SFB career highlights include performing lead roles in Frederick Ashton's Monotones I and Wayne McGregor's Eden/Eden and originating roles in Val Caniparoli's Ibsen's House and Mark Morris' Joyride, as well as working with Christopher Wheeldon and William Forsythe.
For the average person, the holidays in New York City are magical. For dancers, they are out of this world!!!!
To make sure you don't miss the dancey action, should you find yourself in the Big Apple this holiday season, here are three things you and your students simply HAVE to do!
A few days ago, a friend forwarded me the GoFundMe Campaign of Nikki and Ethan White, a dancerly wife and husband duo who escaped the California "Woolsey Fire" with their children but whose home burned to the ground. The couple had met while dancing for Smuin Ballet, and later were one of the top three finalists on Paula Abdul's TV show "Live to Dance." Today, they live in the Los Angeles area, where Ethan is researching how dance partnerships develop interpersonal trust at USC.
I spoke to Nikki about the fire, what comes next and how readers can help.
A still from the new documentary, DANSEUR. Image courtesy DANSEUR
According to
the new documentary DANSEUR, 85% of males who study dance in the United States are bullied or harassed. A quote in the film from Dr. Doug Risner, faculty member at Wayne State University, states, "If this scope of bullying occurred in any activity other than dance, it would be considered a public health crisis by the CDC."
So why is it allowed to persist in ballet? And why aren't we talking about it more? These are the questions that
DANSEUR seeks to answer. But primarily consisting of dance footage and interviews with male dancers like ABT's James Whiteside, Houston Ballet's Harper Watters and Boston Ballet's Derek Dunn, the film only addresses these issues superficially, with anecdotes about individual experiences and generalizations about what it's like to be a male dancer.
Calpulli Mexican Dance Company. Photo by Michael Palma, courtesy of Dance/NYC
What makes a dance performance "traditional," "cultural" or "ethnic"? What if that dance or dance style is so deeply intertwined within a family or community's life, they don't see it as a "dance," a "dance form" or even as "art"?
Ballet Hartford. Photo by Andy Hart, courtesy of 5x5
Sustaining a festival for 16 years strong is an achievement to honor and to celebrate. The 5x5 Dance Festival has become a bustling and full one-day event, this year taking place on Saturday, November 3. The festival has two large goals: to be multigenerational and to feature the vibrant dance taking place statewide in Connecticut.
Studio by the Sea students at a local gym for their first class since the storm. Photo courtesy Wendy Lewis
Wendy Lewis, owner of Studio by the Sea in Panama City Beach, Florida, thought as most Floridians do before a hurricane. The morning of October 8, Lewis dropped off the Moscow Ballet's Great Russian Nutcracker audition director at the airport. She joked that the director's departure was well-timed considering the storm swirling in the Gulf of Mexico. "I headed home thinking it was going to be a normal day," she says. As the storm's intensity strengthened, Lewis started to make the usual preparations. She pulled in chairs and plants from the patio of her studio and boarded up her home on the beach. But what started as an irksome Category 1 hurricane swelled into a life-threatening beast in less than two days.
Lewis opted to close the studio and evacuate to Georgia. She only packed enough clothes to last her a few days. By Thursday, she planned to be back at her studio teaching classes and running Nutcracker rehearsals. But Lewis didn't return until Saturday, October 13, and when she did, her studio was irreparable.
Lucinda Childs Dance will give its final performances during MoMA's "Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done" exhibition. Photo by Julieta Cervantes, Courtesy Pomegranate Arts
At 78, Lucinda Childs is about to pivot—again. The postmodern choreographer and director came to prominence in the 1960s and '70s, first with Judson Dance Theater and then with her own eponymous company. She shut down her troupe almost two decades ago to work as a freelance director, relaunched it nine years later to stage a couple of revivals...and then just kept going. We spoke to her as the company was getting ready to wrap up its final season, which included a summer staging of Available Light—a 1983 work developed with John Adams and Frank Gehry—at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, as well as final performances Oct. 29–Nov. 4 at New York City's Museum of Modern Art.
The inaugural Choreo-Lab included seven choreographers and a physically integrated cast of 20 dancers. Photo by Misako, courtesy of AXIS Dance Company
Among artists, choreographers have it pretty tough—their art requires not just space, but people. For disabled choreographers, those requirements can be even harder to meet. Is the (probably expensive) space accessible? Do they have access to dancers, disabled or not? Can they afford to pay them? In June, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, AXIS Dance Company gave a group of disabled choreographers the gift of time, space and dancers in a weeklong program called Choreo-Lab. Spearheaded by artistic director Marc Brew, who served as a mentor along with co-facilitator Caroline Bowditch, the inaugural Choreo-Lab included seven choreographers and a physically integrated cast of 20 dancers.
In summer 2009, Tyce Diorio choreographed a contemporary piece for "So You Think You Can Dance" on dancers Ade Obayomi and Melissa Sandvig. The result was one of the most touching pieces on breast cancer that we have ever seen. It was emotional. It was technical. It was beautiful. And it has stuck with us ever since. In honor of October being Breast Cancer Awareness month, we thought we would share this beautiful piece.
Major ballet companies are banding together for The Equity Project, to increase the presence of black dancers in ballet. Photo by Joseph Rodman, Courtesy DTH.
