The Australian Ballet announced this week that famed American danseur David Hallberg would be the company’s next Artistic Director, effective January 2021.
See DDP’s tweets on the subject in the shots below:
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The Joyce Theater Foundation (Linda Shelton, Executive Director) joins the worldwide celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birthday with its presentation of Trois Grandes Fugues, featuring three interpretations of the composer’s complex “Grosse Fuge” from a trio of trailblazing female choreographers – Lucinda Childs, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, and Maguy Marin – danced by Lyon Opera Ballet. The engagement will play The Joyce Theater from March 18-22. Tickets, ranging in price from $10-$55, can be purchased at www.Joyce.org, or by calling JoyceCharge at 212-242-0800. Please note: ticket prices are subject to change. The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street. For more information, please visit www.Joyce.org.
In Trois Grandes Fugues, three revolutionary female choreographers – Lucinda Childs, Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker, and Maguy Marin – each lend their distinct style to Beethoven’s intricate “Grosse Fuge” for a string quartet. Each choreographer is paired with a unique recording of the notoriously challenging composition in this triple bill of choreographic imaginings, danced by the exquisite artists of Lyon Opera Ballet. An inquiry into translation, Trois Grandes Fugues, explores how movement and musicality interact in distinct ways, demonstrating how the creative visions of musicians, dancers, and choreographers converge to create a truly novel interpretation that can never be duplicated.
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David Hallberg has been appointed as the next Artistic Director of The Australian Ballet. The American-born superstar dancer, who is a Principal with both American Ballet Theatre and The Bolshoi Ballet, as well as a Principal Guest Artist with The Royal Ballet, knows The Australian Ballet well. He is currently a Resident Guest Artist with the Company, and in 2015/16 undertook an intense 14-month rehabilitation program with TAB’s medical team, who helped him recover from a debilitating ankle injury.
It will be the first time that Hallberg has run a ballet company as Artistic Director. Speaking to Limelight last year, prior to performing at the Sydney Opera House in Pure Dance with Natalia Osipova, he said that he would like to run a company one day. “[It] certainly feels like that’s the direction I’m headed in. I do feel a very inspired inclination to nurture the younger generation, and to really nurture audiences as well from the repertoire that I’ve witnessed throughout the world. I do feel like I’ve been fortunate to gain a lot of experience in Russia, in England, in New York, Japan and all over the world,” he said. “There’s going to come a time where the spotlight goes off me and goes on to other dancers, and I really would like to reward them with the experience that I’ve garnered.”
He agrees that more needs to be done to increase the number of women choreographers in ballet.
That is definitely important, but what else is important is the conversation that The Australian Ballet has with this age, and being relevant in the community, and really trying to ask the question of what is the greater responsibility to the greater community by The Australian Ballet. Right now, the focus is definitely female choreographers but the focus is also in diversity, it’s in inclusivity, it’s in being a relevant and active cultural institution in modern day Australian society.
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DDP Note: A lot of female choreographers featured by companies this week…
Colorado Ballet’s Newest Work Is Based on the Board Game Clue
Catch Colorado Ballet’s triple bill of contemporary works March 6–8 at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. Titled Tour de Force, the program features Edwaard Liang’s Feast of the Gods, Lila York’s Celts and the world premiere of Julia Adam’s Cluedo. Featuring music by Cosmo Sheldrake, this new ballet is based on the board game Clue; check out rehearsal footage in the above video.
New Ballet Fantastique Full-Length Is Set in Ancient Ireland
Mother-daughter choreographic duo Donna and Hannah Bontrager, artistic directors of Ballet Fantastique, present their newest full-length ballet March 6–8. Dragon & the Night Queen is set in ancient Ireland, and explores magical worlds, dragons and epic battles. The ballet is set to a score by resident composer Gerry Rempel, who will play it live with Celtic rock and Irish traditional musician Eliot Grasso.
Carolina Ballet Celebrates Four Female Choreographers With Mixed Bill
Principal guest choreographer Lynne Taylor Corbett’s Boléro returns to Carolina Ballet March 5–22 on a mixed bill program celebrating female choreographers. Boléro, set to Maurice Ravel’s famed score, joins world premieres by three emerging dancemakers: Mariana Oliveira, Adriana Pierce and Carolina Ballet dancer Jenny Palmer.
Grand Rapids Ballet Presents World Premieres by Nine Company Dancers
This week, Grand Rapids Ballet gives company dancers the chance to showcase their choreographic chops. Jumpstart 2020, presented at the Peter Martin Wege Theatre March 6–8, features new works by nine artists: Yuka Oba-Muschiana, Gretchen Steimle, Adriana Wagenveld, Isaac Aoki, Nigel Tau, Matthew Wenckowski, Ednis Gomez, James Cunningham and Sophia Stefanopoulos.
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Dance Data Project® today released the updated “Top 50” list of United States ballet companies, which will make up the sample of ballet companies studied by the research team for 2020 reports associated with ballet company repertoire and operations.
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Rachel Moore has the kind of deep background in the arts that compels people to listen when she speaks. After identifying as a dancer all her life and dancing professionally with American Ballet Theatre for six years, she found a calling in advocating for artists’ rights. Eventually she returned to ABT as executive director/CEO, a position she held for 11 years. In 2015, she became president and CEO for The Music Center in Los Angeles, the largest performing arts center on the West Coast. —DBW
While there are those who suggest that executive leadership requires you to have “all the answers,” I don’t agree. Instead, I believe that true leadership articulates where one wants to go; why the desired destination is important; and what the values are that those on the journey should embrace. The nuts and bolts of how one gets there is a collective process that requires the talents and skills of a diverse team of people.
Rather than them trying to do it all, I offer this advice for leaders in our field:
1.Build a team that does not look or think like you, and be sure it represents a diverse set of skills.
As Doris Kearns Goodwin famously noted in her biography of Abraham Lincoln, “Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.“ The point is not to get to your decision; but, rather, to determine the right decision. Research shows, time and again, that diverse teams are smarter, more productive and more innovative. (See “Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter,” by David Rock and Heidi Grant, for instance, in Harvard Business Review.)As you build your team, be honest about your strengths and weaknesses and hire people who are different from you and who have differing skills sets. Reach outside your comfort zone and curate your team to be strong and capable as one unit.
2. Build a personal board of directors.
In my book, The Artist’s Compass, I suggest that one establish a group of personal advisors who will provide support and advice. I call this a “personal board of directors.” These advisors should be people who support you as an individual (rather than just your organization). They should have the skills or knowledge you lack, challenge you in different ways, tell you the truth no matter what, and understand your professional goals while bringing different points of view to the table. Having people with whom you can vent, strategize, brainstorm, etc., without having to worry about the politics of your workplace, is revelatory and a true stress reliever.
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Tobi Tobias, whose dance criticism for New York magazine and other outlets made her an influential voice in the genre for decades, died on Feb. 13 at her home in Manhattan. She was 81.
Her husband, Irwin Tobias, confirmed the death. He said she had been in declining health for some time.
Ms. Tobias, who was also the author of a number of children’s books, began writing about dance in the early 1970s, starting with an article about Twyla Tharp for the alumni magazine of Barnard College, both women’s alma mater. Armed with that and another article about Ms. Tharp for a different publication — the sum total of her dance writing at that point — she offered her services to Dance Magazine.
To her surprise, William Como, the editor in chief, called her in for an interview. Although they differed about a lot of things — “Just for instance, he was a Béjart guy; I was a Balanchine gal,” she wrote on her blog some 40 years later — he enlisted her as a writer and, later in the decade, as an editor of other critics.
She became the dance critic at New York magazine in 1980 and held that post for 22 years. She also wrote for The New York Times, The Village Voice, Bloomberg News and the website Arts Journal, among other outlets.
Her articles for Arts Journal made her a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in criticism. The Pulitzer judges singled her out for “work that reveals passion as well as deep historical knowledge of dance, her well-expressed arguments coming from the heart as well as the head.”
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The Harvey Weinstein verdict is at once gravely disappointing and grimly satisfying.
Until the verdict, the only sliver of satisfaction came from the fact that the legacy he built had been destroyed. Now, though, because he’s been convicted of two out of five counts — rape and criminal sexual act — the first line in his obituary won’t be about his Oscars or “alleged” acts, but about his felony convictions. His name will also forever be synonymous with the worst excesses of the entertainment world, whose power brokers have too often acted as if they were above the law. Harvey Weinstein is going to prison, and that is profound. (He faces other, similar charges in Los Angeles.)
So, Weinstein is no more. Yet there are no silver linings here. Women were hurt and traumatized, and their lives and careers irreparably damaged. The verdict doesn’t change that. Yes, there was a surge in activism after news of his abuse broke in October 2017, but women were already angry, already organizing. The African-American activist Tarana Burke launched #MeToo in 2006; the first Women’s March took place in Jan. 2017, the day after Donald J. Trump became president. In the end, Weinstein is part of a far larger story about contemporary feminist activism, including in the entertainment industry, where women have been fighting sexism for decades.
That sexism is both systemic and symptomatic of the industry’s history of acting as if it is above the law. This has led to a wide range of exploitation including racism and on-set fatalities, exploitation that has been habitually rationalized as the cost those without power pay for doing business in a putatively glamorous industry. It’s hard to think of another business, outside of sex work, that has sexually exploited people so openly and whose abusive practices — emblematized by the casting couch — have been trivialized, at times with leering giggles. It’s well-known that the industry is a grossly exploitative of both men and women — why have we tolerated this?
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Business World: Petition against BP’s new artistic director finds support
NEWS that a Russian will become the new artistic director of Ballet Philippines (BP), replacing National Artist Alice Reyes after her term ends in March, has sparked a social media uproar in cultural circles, inspiring a Change.org petition and a demand that the appointment be rescinded.
“We the Ballet Philippines community, dance artists, alumni, and artistic team, are united in the belief that Ballet Philippines is Filipino, for the Filipinos, and by Filipinos,” declares a statement addressed “To the Ballet Philippines Foundation, Inc. Board of Trustees,” which has been spread through social media with the hashtag #WeAreBalletPhilippines.
“We call on the Board to revoke the appointment of the foreign national Mr. Mikhail Martynyuk as Artistic Director,” it continues.
There is also a Change.org petition asking the BP Board to “to rescind or revise the contract offered to a Russian artist from a position as Artistic Director to another honored artist position in Ballet Philippines and to keep the position of Artistic Director Filipino.” It has garnered 2,558 signatures as of posting.
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