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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

Pointe: Ballet Co.Laboratory’s Unique Business Model Has Kept Its Dancers Securely Employed Throughout the Pandemic

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22 March 2021

By Kyra Laubaucher

In 2018, Zoé Emilie Henrot and eight other dancers suddenly found themselves unemployed when their Twin Cities–based company transitioned to a school-only model just weeks before their season was supposed to start. They had two options: go their separate ways or band together. Joining forces, they created Ballet Co.Laboratory, an artist-led company in St. Paul, Minnesota, with an inventive repertoire and an unconventional business structure. Since its founding, Ballet Co.Laboratory has presented original works like Nutcracker in Wonderland (a new spin on the holiday classic), The Snow Queen and Remembering the Little Prince, as well as premieres by emerging choreographers. The company’s dual-contract structure also provides its dancers with administrative employment, whether in management, communications, development or teaching—a framework that became especially useful in keeping the dancers employed during the pandemic.

Pointe sat down with Henrot, the company’s artistic director, to talk about Ballet Co.Laboratory, its recent Laboratory II performances, and how the company’s distinctive structure helped prepare its dancers to face pandemic challenges head-on.

To read the full interview, click here.

Broadway World: New England Ballet Theatre of Connecticut Presents BALLET SPEAKS: AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

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11 March 2021

By BWW News Desk

New England Ballet Theatre of Connecticut will present Ballet Speaks: Against Domestic Violence, a ballet performance honoring domestic violence victims and survivors through the art of dance.

NEBT believes that it is important to tell the stories that are kept quiet, the stories that have been forgotten or overlooked.

Several advocates for victims of domestic violence will be at the event to speak about the cause and how the community can work to break the cycle of domestic violence.

In honor of International Women’s Month, the evening will feature two female choreographers: NEBT Co-Founder & Artistic Director Emily Orzada and Guest Choreographer Keerati Jinakunwiphat.

The event takes place on March 13, 2021 at 7:00pm at the Hartford Dance Collective. Viewing-In-Person and Virtual Viewer ticket options available.

Learn more at https://www.neballettheatre.com/balletspeaks.

25% of ticket sales for this event will be donated to Interval House, a local non-profit organization working to end domestic violence. 25% of sales of NEBT Merchandise including, t-shirts, stickers and tote bags, will be donated to Interval House. 100% of sales of Pointe Shoe signed by NEBT Company Artists will be donated to Interval House.

Read more about Ballet Speaks and the full feature on Broadway World here.

Datebook: Review: S.F. Ballet digitally delivers Art Deco glamour in a modern masterpiece

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4 March 2021

By Rachel Howard

If a choreographer wants to make the most of this pandemic era, Sarah Van Patten is the woman to put on the screen. Van Patten, who joined the San Francisco Ballet in 2002, is the finest actress-dancer in the company, so it is good to have a beautifully directed record of her theatrical genius in Danielle Rowe’s new dance film, “Wooden Dimes,” the clever Art Deco centerpiece of the Ballet’s digital Program 3, which begins streaming Thursday, March 4.

Rowe, increasingly in demand to choreograph for regional companies and here making her first ensemble work for the Ballet, has carried out “Wooden Dimes” with a shrewd eye for spectacle and a mature choreographer’s skill. There are shiny prop-driven delights throughout the production, particularly a Ziegfield Follies-like sequence with fluffy feather fans shot from above and a clever group rendezvous with a massive table. But the real beauty of the film comes in two long pas de deux, simultaneously swirling and nuanced, for Van Patten and Luke Ingham. Between these little love poems our story, spare as it is, unfolds.

Read the full review of “Wooden Dimes” here.

Pointe: María Riccetto Talks About Her New Role as Artistic Director of Uruguay’s Ballet Nacional de Sodre

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By Marina Harss

16 February 2021

On January 1, 2021, Uruguayan ballerina María Riccetto officially became the new director of her national ballet company, Ballet Nacional de Sodre. Seldom has the selection of a new leader felt so apt. Riccetto’s career has been a model of hard work, perseverance and attention to craft, rewarded by recognition and responsibility.

Many ballet lovers in New York City remember Riccetto with great fondness. The former American Ballet Theatre soloist, born and raised in Uruguay, had a very particular quality: the ability to transmit a combination of affability and joy, in roles like the young girl in Le Spectre de la Rose, or Twyla Tharp’s Known by Heart, or even as a flower girl in Don Quixote. When she danced, you felt you knew her.

In 2012 she returned to Montevideo, her native city, at the invitation of Julio Bocca, who had just taken the reins at BNS. It was one of the most significant decisions of her career. She became the troupe’s leading ballerina, performing every important role in the repertory. In 2017, she was awarded a Benois de la Danse for her performance of Tatiana in John Cranko’s Onegin.

Along the way, she became a household name in Uruguay, as universally recognized as the country’s soccer champions. Since last year, she has been a fixture on the Uruguayan version of the TV show America’s Got Talent. There is even a line of perfumes named after her. “Floral, with a hint of jasmine,” she told me.

So it makes perfect sense that, after retiring from the stage at the end of 2019 at age 39, she would be tapped for the company’s top job. When I caught up with her in early February, via Zoom, she spoke from her new office, with a photograph taken during one of her performances of Giselle behind her. What follows is an edited version of our conversation, translated from Spanish.

Read the entire article here.

 

Pointe: David Hallberg Takes the Reins at The Australian Ballet

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Candice Thompson for Dance Magazine

29 January 2021

The Australian Ballet has long been a home away from home for David Hallberg. During a two-year struggle with an ankle injury that required two surgeries, he spent the most pivotal time of his recuperation in Melbourne, working with TAB’s in-house medical and physical therapy team. Combined with a decade of guest performances there, including his triumphant comeback show in December 2016, it seems only fitting that Hallberg has returned to TAB as its new artistic director.

 

The announcement that you were taking over leadership at The Australian Ballet came about a week before much of the world started locking down due to the coronavirus. How has the pandemic affected your career transition?

When COVID hit, I was about to dance Swan Lake with The Royal Ballet, my last scheduled shows with Natasha [Natalia Osipova]. We’d wanted to do Swan Lake for years, and just as we were finally getting our chance, everything shut down. I got on a plane to Melbourne before the borders shut in Australia. I stayed there for three months, and—this is the silver lining—I got so much preliminary work done.

I’m not used to being on the other side. A lot of the ballet career is passive; if you’re in the machine of a huge organization, the machine just runs for you. So now I’m running the machine, in a way, and I’m green, but I’m learning.

You more or less said goodbye to New York City audiences with ABT’s digital fall gala.

There was supposed to be a farewell tour. I was in shape to dance Siegfried when everything stopped. I essentially took about four months off dancing. After Melbourne, I spent time with my parents and went on an epic road trip. I started getting back into shape in Phoenix and when I returned to New York, some things started to form: Christopher Wheeldon created on Sara Mearns and me for Fall For Dance. We had always wanted to dance together. And then Pam Tanowitz and I worked together on a solo that we filmed for ABT’s gala.

Tell us about your history with Pam.

When ABT Incubator was called the “Innovation Initiative,” she was the first choreographer I brought in. That was 10 years ago, and she wasn’t getting the recognition that she is now. She’s really fascinated with classical ballet, but comes from a completely different background, approaches it with a bookish dissection. Pam’s work is smart, not showy, and well thought out. She doesn’t spoon-feed the audience, nor does she tell the dancers, “Oh my God, do that trick that I saw you do on Instagram.” The solo was actually the first time we’ve ever created together. We did this kind of dark, film noir piece with a vintage feel.

Read the entire article here.

Datebook: Helgi Tomasson to step down at S.F. Ballet in 2022, after nearly 40 years at the helm

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By Joshua Kosman

6 January 2020

Helgi Tomasson will step down as artistic director and principal choreographer of the San Francisco Ballet by June 2022, the company announced Wednesday, Jan. 6. The move will put the seal on nearly four decades of artistic leadership that has helped propel the ballet company to the forefront of the dance world.

Since being named to the position in 1985, Tomasson, 78, has been hailed for his success at combining excellence in the classical ballet repertoire with a spirit of artistic innovation and the development of new work. Tomasson alone has created more than 50 dances for the company, as well as commissioning work from a wide range of contemporary masters and developing artists. Meanwhile, the technical level of execution on display at the War Memorial Opera House has made S.F. Ballet a beacon both nationally and internationally.

Six years ago, in an interview with The Chronicle, Tomasson waved away the prospect of retirement, saying he was too busy to even think about the possibility. But now, he says, the Ballet is well-positioned to forge ahead with a new chapter in its 88-year history — and he and his wife, Marlene, are eager to spend more time with family, including their two grandchildren in Germany.

“This had been on my mind for a while, even before the pandemic,” he said in a video interview over Zoom. “And as I assess where we are now, I feel the company has come through this very well.

“We’ve been rehearsing since September. We were able to create three new ballets and film them for streaming. That’s quite an accomplishment.”

Read the full article here.

New York Times: 5 Dance Picture BooksChildren of all abilities glide from page to stage with the likes of American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet pros.

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Children of all abilities glide from page to stage with the likes of American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet pros.

I WILL DANCE

Written by Nancy Bo Flood

Illustrated by Julianna Swaney

“I want to dance, but I can hardly move.”

In “I Will Dance,” Nancy Bo Flood parts the curtain on the life of a girl who was born with cerebral palsy and expected to live “one minute, maybe two, not 10 years of minutes.” Our young narrator — succinct, soulful and sitting in a wheelchair — cannot blow out the candles on her birthday cake. “Not enough strength.” But she has a wish: She wants to dance.

Any book that opens a child’s imagination to the art of movement is something I can get behind, but “I Will Dance” does more: It puts us in this child’s chair, in her tiny yearning body and in her mind, which is mobile and alive. When she speaks, what strikes you is her brevity. It’s as if she has no time to waste on unnecessary words. She is so soft-spoken, yet so firm. It’s not that she wants to dance, it’s that she will.

Of five new children’s dance books, “I Will Dance” is the only one to move away from ballet (once the unrequited birthday wish is divulged). That’s brave; as anyone with a child knows, tutus sell. But this approach is not the only thing that sets it apart: It’s also the details. Our heroine is so smitten with dance that a poster of Martha Graham in “Appalachian Spring” hangs next to her bed. This kills me. Still, when she learns of an audition for Young Dance (a real organization devoted to dancers of all abilities), she is racked by self-doubt: “I am safe in my steel chair, stationary wheels, a motor, me.” At the studio, dancers are arranged in a circle and told to “pass the touch.” The teacher, after kicking a leg behind her in a graceful arc, bends toward the girl and touches her fingers. “Something inside me changes.” As the chain continues, we see the power and harmony that builds from dancing bodies in Julianna Swaney’s illustrations, which glide across the page lending innocence to lightness, effervescence to urgency. “I Will Dance” rides on the sensation of movement; it’s simple yet sophisticated.

B IS FOR BALLET
A Dance Alphabet
Written by John Robert Allman
Illustrated by Rachael Dean

But can a more conventional book on the world of ballet lead a child to do more than, say, wear a tutu to school? Two collaborations with American Ballet Theater try, though neither sparkles. “B Is for Ballet,” by John Robert Allman, with illustrations by Rachael Dean, takes young readers through the alphabet, starting with A for arabesque. It is full of images of Ballet Theater dancers past and present, but they look like their aspirational Bitmojis rather than the actual people. And in a career as ageist as ballet, it’s disheartening to see Alessandra Ferri, one of the greatest dramatic ballerinas of all time, relegated to the letter I, as in “ice bath” for “soothing tired, tattered feet. After promenades in pointe shoes, relaxation can’t be beat.”

…

WELCOME TO BALLET SCHOOL
Written by Ashley Bouder
Illustrated by Julia Bereciartu

In “Welcome to Ballet School,” Bouder, a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, pays homage to her former teacher, the celebrated Marcia Dale Weary. Julia Bereciartu’s illustrations capture her charmingly, from her trademark blond bangs to her sensible skirt and cardigan. The scene is the first day of class for a diverse group of young people, including Violet, Bouder’s daughter in the book and in life. During the second half of the class, Bouder shows up to teach them sections of “Sleeping Beauty.” As they work their way through ballet positions, the children are given playful facial expressions by Bereciartu: Tongues stick out when steps become complicated; hilarious frozen smiles appear when they try to balance. Through it all, “Welcome” takes ballet seriously. Bouder explains ballet terminology with diagrams that resemble those in a training manual. (My younger self would have eaten it up.) She also moves beyond steps to the heart of dancing. When Violet topples over while stretching her leg high in a grand battement, Weary tells her, “It is better to try our hardest and fall down than to not try at all.” It’s something of an inside joke. Bouder, a dancer known for her virtuosity and daring, has delivered splendid crashes at City Ballet. And the message is correct: A fall is a sign that a dancer is going for it.

Read the full list from the New York Times here.

Washington Post: Opinion: Innovation made ‘The Nutcracker’ a Christmas classic. A pandemic won’t stop it

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By Melissa R. Klapper

21 December 2020

Melissa R. Klapper is a professor at Rowan University and author of “Ballet Class: An American History.”

Covid-19 has cost us cherished holiday traditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns against traveling for family visits, Santas and menorahs sit behind plastic partitions, religious services have moved outside, and the National Christmas Tree Lighting went online. And for many Americans, particularly painful is the absence of live performances of “The Nutcracker.”

But the story of “The Nutcracker” in America is a story of innovation. And the same creative spirit that will help Americans re-create at least a little of this treasured ritual can help revitalize the ballet for generations to come. “The Nutcracker” was not always beloved, nor was it always associated with the holiday season. When it premiered in Russia in 1892, hopes were high for a ballet created by the same team — composer Peter Tchaikovsky and choreographer Marius Petipa, this time with the aid of his assistant Lev Ivanov — that had so successfully ushered “Sleeping Beauty” to the stage two years earlier. But Tchaikovsky himself thought the new ballet was “infinitely worse” than “Sleeping Beauty,” and the critical and audience reception was lukewarm. “The Nutcracker” was only sporadically revived over the next few decades. Some Americans had a chance to see a condensed version staged by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the 1940s on the company’s many cross-country tours, and Disney’s “Fantasia” helped popularize the music. But it wasn’t until 1944 that the San Francisco Ballet performed the first full-length “Nutcracker” in the United States.

Read the full article here.

NYU: The Center for Ballet and the Arts and National Sawdust Collaborate to Support Women Composers and Choreographers

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3 December 2020

The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation has created a new program between the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU and National Sawdust to foster collaboration between women composers and choreographers with the aim of creating new works in the virtual medium.

The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation today announced the creation of a new program to foster collaboration between women composers and choreographers with the aim of creating new works in the virtual medium. The $300,000 gift supports a one-year partnership between National Sawdust and The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU (CBA). Beginning in November 2020, the program supports 45 appointed women choreographers and composers to help develop their skills, create and present new work, and build a community of like-minded artists that will enhance their careers. At least half of the participating women represent BIWOC (Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color) communities.

Alexander Sanger, a Trustee of the Toulmin Foundation, on behalf of his fellow trustees, William Villafranco and Walter Montaign, said: “In this time when live stage performance is not possible, composers and choreographers need to explore new ways to create, collaborate and present their work. Creating for the virtual world is fundamentally different than creating for the stage and involves skills and partnering in the fields of film, sound, set design, lighting and computer technology that are in many cases new for the choreographer or composer. This program aims to fill that need. Further, the program will continue the Foundation’s efforts to bring increased diversity and support a wide range of talents in the performing arts. Mrs. Toulmin, a passionate supporter of the performing arts, believed in fairness and equity for all women, and we are proud to carry on her legacy.”

This appointed program will feature five “Toulmin Fellows” and forty “Toulmin Creators”. Each will receive a package of financial, intellectual, and creative resources to support development of new work.

The five Toulmin Fellows will spend the winter in residence at The Center for Ballet and the Arts and the spring at National Sawdust, building toward participation in National Sawdust’s Digital Discovery Festival (DDF). They will receive financial support, office and studio space, and access to videographers, sound engineers, AV equipment and marketing support. Each fellow will be paired with a carefully selected mentor who will support their creative processes throughout the year.

Read the full announcement here.

Harper’s Bazaar: How Three Women Produced a Ballet Gala in a Pandemic

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By Erica Gonzalez

17 December 2020

Ballerina Melanie Hamrick wanted to do something to help the dance community months into a pandemic that put many of them out of work. “I hate seeing my friends and colleagues not getting to dance,” she tells BAZAAR.com. After lockdowns and social distancing measures were introduced this year, live performances went on hiatus. Prestigious companies like the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre had to close for the season. But Hamrick also thought about the audience members who wouldn’t be able to watch their favorite performances in person, especially during the holidays. “How can we also help them?” she thought.

The former ABT ballerina teamed up with ABT principal dancer Christine Shevchenko and choreographer Joanna DeFelice to produce a unique performance during the COVID-19 pandemic that gave dancers a chance to work while adhering to health and safety guidelines. Through their new production company, Live Arts Global, they created A Night at the Ballet, which features dancers from a variety of troupes: ABT, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Alvin Ailey, Dance Theater of Harlem, and even Mariinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg, Russia.

The one-hour streaming event goes live on YouTube on Live Arts Global’s channel starting at 7 p.m. ET on December 17, and lasts through December 20. The set will include pieces from The Nutcracker, Romeo & Juliet, Don Quixote, and more. And it’s completely free to watch; though, they’re asking for donations to benefit the performers and crew of the production.

While many dance companies are already showing virtual online performances to make up for their closed seasons, A Night at the Ballet was produced entirely during the coronavirus era rather than using footage from older performances. But that’s where the challenge came in: How does one do that safely?

Read the full article here.