April 1st: Palm Desert Choreography Festival, April 1st: UNCSA Choreographic Institute Residency, April 30th: South Arts: Professional Development & Artistic Planning Grants, April 30th: South Arts: Express Grants, May 6th: Doris Duke Foundation Grant, May 7th: South Arts Individual Artist Career Opportunity Grant, June 1st: Miami DanceMakers
"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
Dancers from Bangarra Dance Theatre perform at the Harris Theater.
An inclusive season is in the works for the Harris Theater in Chicago. A frequent venue for dance in the Windy City, the theater’s upcoming season will feature many female choreographers and companies supportive of the artists.
Work by Pina Bausch, Martha Graham Dance Company, Bangarra Dance Theatre is at the top of our list to see. View the entire seasonal program here.
Pacific Northwest Ballet has created a year-long course dedicated curating female choreography from an early stage in a dancer’s career. New Voices, as it is called, is funded by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation – known to support women in dance – and was first tested as an aspect of PNB’s summer program.
To Pointe Magazine, Artistic Director of PNB Peter Boal had this to say:
“I do post-performance Q&As, and questions I hear so frequently are ‘Why aren’t there more female choreographers?’ or ‘What can we do to ensure there will be more?’ As I think about this issue, I keep going further and further into the pipelines of empowerment, support and opportunity. It was natural for me to think, Oh, I could be a choreographer. And I don’t know if women in classical ballet have felt that.”
Boal even went on to admit that he does not have enough female choreographers featured in his upcoming season. It is essential for leaders to admit those instances in which they could do better and change their programming in the future to reflect their determination to be more equitable.
The New Voices program is a remarkable step in the right direction for this leading company and supports the commitment Boal makes in his discussion with Pointe. As the program unfolds, DDP will follow closely to see the emerging choreographers with a new voice and opportunity. This is just the beginning for creative young women in a leading ballet school.
Read the interview with Boal and report on the initiative in Pointe Magazine.
https://www.dancedataproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DDP_logo_Primary.png00Isabelle Vailhttps://www.dancedataproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DDP_logo_Primary.pngIsabelle Vail2019-02-11 18:01:592019-02-12 22:01:26Pacific Northwest Ballet’s New Voices: Choreography and Process for Young Women in Dance
This year’s Choreographers Showcase — #ChorShow — is a show that’s unlike any other program the Louisville Ballet has produced.
It follows in the tradition of company members, and sometimes guests, creating new pieces of dance. There the similarities fade.
This year’s show is in a non-traditional space; within that space each work is site-specific. Continuing Producing and Artistic Director Robert Curran’s aesthetic of pairing dance with other genres, each of the five ballets in #ChorShow has a different designer, who are drawn from the Kentucky College of Art + Design. KyCAD also provides the venue at their Third Street campus. The short pieces are scheduled multiple times at each performance, meaning that audiences select which piece they see in what order. A food truck and an outside bar add to the casual vibe of the evening.
Guest choreographer Tim Harbour, resident choreographer at the Australian Ballet, is paired with sculptor Matt Weir. Together they explore a future that might be dystopian, and how young people will exist there. Weir’s overhead canopy installation morphs beautifully in Daniel L. Perez’s excellent and evocative lighting design; is it natural, is it a chemical formation post-eco tragedy — either or both could be true at any point.
https://www.dancedataproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DDP_logo_Primary.png00dancedatahttps://www.dancedataproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DDP_logo_Primary.pngdancedata2019-02-11 17:43:282019-04-02 10:10:42WFPL: In A Remarkable Choreographers Showcase, Louisville Ballet Continues To Innovate
On a chilly Wednesday night in Seattle, a group of young dancers is planting seeds of revolution.
The girls — all 14 to 16 years old — are flocked on the floor of a Pacific Northwest Ballet rehearsal studio, chatting nervously while parents file into the viewing area. As advanced-intermediateLevel VII students enrolled in PNB School, these young women have been in dance recitals before, but this one is different. This time, they’ve written the choreography themselves.
“Ballet is woman,” said legendary choreographer George Balanchine. He had a point, except when it comes to the choreography.
While modern dance has long drawn female choreographers, contemporary ballet remains largely created by men. The women who tend to pop up on seasonal ballet lineups — Twyla Tharp, Jessica Lang, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa — are exceptions to a norm that has existed since approximately the Renaissance. (PNB’s 2018-2019 season includes 13 male choreographers and justone woman, Robin Mineko Williams, on the Director’s Choice mixed bill.)
In an effort to help right this disparity, PNB School Director Peter Boal has said he is currently working to “rectify an imbalance that exists in ballet.” This fall, PNB launched a program that aims to dig toward the root of the problem by encouraging women to consider choreography as early as young teens.
DDP is excited to share highlights of some of Penny Saunders‘ upcoming work as Resident Choreographer at Grand Rapids Ballet, under the leadership of Artistic Director James Sofranko. Her new piece is entitled TESTIMONY, and DDP founder Liza Yntema was one of the early few to have the pleasure of watching the work in the studios of Grand Rapids Ballet.
See more videos from the work below:
An interview with Saunders by Yntema will be featured soon on our website as the first in the “Meet the Choreographer” series.
https://www.dancedataproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DDP_logo_Primary.png00Isabelle Vailhttps://www.dancedataproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DDP_logo_Primary.pngIsabelle Vail2019-02-09 13:14:332019-02-11 17:25:02Penny Saunders at Grand Rapids Ballet