Dance Magazine articles from March 2005

Dance Magazine archives from March 2005

It makes us cringe.(Curtain up)(Editorial)
March 1, 2005... It's hard to swallow. And yet we need it to grow. I'm not talking about vitamin pills. Fin talking about criticism. From the earliest days of our training, we constantly get criticized--about our feet, our head placement, our port de bras,...

Spiritual proportions.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... Regarding the December issue's article on spirituality: Asian and African dance openly acknowledge their spiritual foundations or purposes, while Western dance shies away from recognizing the spiritual elements of physical and artistic...

Becoming dance.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... Wendy Perron's December "Curtain Up" column and the feature article "The Divine Within" were wonderful. So often in dance we give most attention to the body, but when we are able to connect our movement with our spirit, our soul, then we truly...

One degree of separation.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... As a veteran dance student of both Alfredo Corvino and Marjorie Mussman, I would like to commend DANCE MAGAZINE's "Teacher's Wisdom" articles in November and December on these two dance masters. There is a link between them that deserves...

Corvino Corvino.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... My friends and I really enjoyed reading the magazine's interview with Alfredo Corvino. He was a mentor to so many of us. Imagine having 50 long-term students over the years and he never missed one of our performances. Amazing. VANCE VOGEL...

Teacher not forgotten.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... I was deeply saddened to learn of Larry White's passing. I studied Graham technique from him at Butler University and was surprised to see no mention of his time there in "Remembering Larry White" (see "Transitions," January). He brought me, a...

Parson to watch.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... In response to "Missing a Choreographer" (October, "Letters"), I would really, love it if DM wrote an article about the L.A.-based choreographer Adam Parson and his Commonality Dance Company. He taught at a summer intensive in Oslo, Norway that...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2005... In January's "When Your Body Gets the Blues," Paul Taylor company member Richard Chen See was misidentified. In "Hail to Hawkins" (January, "Dance Finder"), the date in which Plains Daybreak premiered was misstated. It should have read...

Quote of the month.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... "In my experience, no species of performing artist is as self-critical as a dancer."--Susan Sontag (1933-2004) From "Dancer and the Dance," published in Where the Stress Falls (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001). See more on...

Heim does Vegas.(Dance Matters)(Interview)
March 1, 2005... WHEN ASKED WHY the world would want another Cirque du Soleil show, Jacques Heim, choreographer and founder of Los Angeles-based Diavolo Dance Theater, staunchly replies: "Because the world needs to not be surrounded by bad television, bad...

A New solution for an old problem.
March 1, 2005... WITH THE: California Arts Council budget reduced drastically, four San Francisco Bay Area community foundations and three state and national foundations have banded together to create a $1 million fund benefiting a key player often excluded...

Riverdance: treasure or trivialization? A Commentary.
March 1, 2005... IT HAS BEEN 10 years since Riverdance leapt onto the world stage and began its journey across four continents, playing to a live audience of more than 18 million and a television audience of more than 1.5 billion. The show celebrates this...

Splitting the headaches, sharing the rewards.
March 1, 2005... IF TWO HEADS are better than one, just think what can be achieved by putting three of four together. At least that's what many New York City dance organizations seem to be thinking as they embark on some novel collaborations to help stretch...

Bergen report: winds from the north.
March 1, 2005... THE PORT CITY of Bergen, Norway's second largest, teems in the bright months with tourists as boats embark on cruises around the country's natural wonders. But as nights grow long, Bergen's focus shifts to cultural wonders. Oktoberdans, the...

Strathmore: Does dance in D.C. need it?
March 1, 2005... WALK INTO THE Music Center at Strathmore's DM new concert hall at ground level and look up. Or come in five stories above and look down. Either view will take your breath away. You have entered a vast sculpture that seats 2000. Its inside...

Stepping into light and sound.(New York Notebook)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Imagine stepping into a skirt of lights and light sensors that affect the sound around you. Jodi Melnick gets to do just that in Repair, a three-way collaboration by choreographer/dancer Vicky Shick, visual artist Barbara Kilpatrick, and sound...

Feast and beast.(New York Notebook)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Introdans, a Dutch company that delights children and adults, returns to The New Victory March 4-13. Classical and modern music and dance melt together in their new repertoire of top choreographers. Hans van Manen's Black Cake, a hilarious duet...

Silver steps.(New York Notebook)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... For 25 years Steps on Broadway has been home base to dancers of all styles and levels--tap to ballet, beginning to professional. Last December it celebrated its silver anniversary with a bash hosted by founder and artistic director Carol...

Advice for dancers.
March 1, 2005... MY DREAM IS TO PERFORM IN A CONTEMPORARY DANCE COMPANY. To PAY FOR DANCE CLASSES, I WORK AS AN AEROBICS INSTRUCTOR IN A HEALTH CLUB. THE SALARY IS GOOD COMPARED TO MY FORMER WAITRESSING JOB. THE PROBLEM IS THAT MY KNEE HAS BEGUN TO HURT IN...

Take a deep breath.(Mind your Body)
March 1, 2005... OAKLAND Ballet dancer Genevieve Custer was forced to think about her breathing when she was diagnosed with asthma. She often found herself out of breath, especially when performing. Finally she turned to yoga. As she became more conscious of...

Paul Taylor roundtable.
March 1, 2005... Last fall, six Paul Taylor dancers (including Paul) from different but overlapping stretches of the last 50 years came together to talk about his work. The group gathered in the conference room of the Paul Taylor studios, and DM editor in chief...

Taylor goes gold.
March 1, 2005... Get cheap tix! The Paul Taylor Dance Company is offering $15 seats for its 50th anniversary season at City Center, March 1-6, 8-13 and 15-20. Opening night offers the New York premiere of Klezmerbluegrass, featuring live music by The Klezmer...

On Lisa Viola: a personal view.
March 1, 2005... As expected, the 50th anniversary season of the Paul Taylor Dance Company has restored to public scrutiny the inimitable dances and lasting memories of an American cultural institution. Unfortunately, the occasion has also revived some of the...

Tulsa Ballet speaks an international language in rodeo country.
March 1, 2005... Company class. Torsos plunge to the floor and arch back into the horizontal. With intense concentration and unwavering attention, about 30 dancers from 15 countries work at a level of expertise one would expect to see in a major coastal city or...

Taking it on the chin.(Coping With Criticism)
March 1, 2005... Anyone who signs on as a dancer or choreographer inevitably faces the battering ram of criticism. It comes with the owner's manual. Whether in its extreme form--canewielding, Stalinesque teachers hurling verbal grenades, of poison-penned...

I'm just not good enough: how one dancer fell into the black hole of self-criticism, and climbed out--and learned a thing or two about technique.(Coping With Criticism)
March 1, 2005... I was sinking in Spain... not from the sharp July sun, or the pitchers of sangria, or the tire-sized pans of paella at midnight, but from my own quicksand of insecurities. It was the summer of 2002, and I was in Barcelona, in the middle of a...

Where a word can be a blow; teachers are learning when tough is too tough. (Coping With Criticism).
March 1, 2005... San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Muriel Maffre remembers the day her teacher at the Paris Opera Ballet School told her parents, "Muriel is a beautiful plant, but she can't dance." Only 14 at the time, Maffre went on to prove herself as a...

Passing the torch: coaching young artists for the New York International Ballet Competition.(Coping With Criticism)
March 1, 2005... Inside three New York City studios, 48 young ballet dancers work intensely, absorbing three vastly different pieces of choreography. Every second counts as all eyes focus on a coach. This figure--singing out counts, correcting, demonstrating,...

Breaking out: broadway fireball Nancy Lemenager hits her stride in Movin' Out.
March 1, 2005... It's every gypsy's dream: to be pulled from a Broadway chorus line to do a featured solo; to parlay that solo into bigger roles around the country; to return to Broadway as tire star of a new musical. Nancy Lemenager lived that dream, and the...

Meet these dancing feet.(Tap Shoes)
March 1, 2005... High heeled, low heeled, soft leather, hard leather, split soled, and full soled--all tap shoes are not created equal. Different styles of tap shoes facilitate different styles of tap dancing. When shopping for a shoe, you need to consider...

Round About the Ballet.(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Round About the Ballet By William Cubberley and Joseph Carman; photographs by Roy Round. Pompton Plains, N J: Amadeus Press/Limelight Editions, 2004. 210 pages. Hardcover, $29.95 Roy Round, whose dance photographs fill this handsome volume,...

Swan Vol. 1.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Swan Vol. 1 By Ariyoshi Kyoko. Wildstorm Productions, DC Comics, 2005. Paper, $9.95 The manga (Japanese comic book) Swan tackles the challenges of the ballet world through the illustrated story of Hijiri Masumi. A passionate ballet...

Cirque du Soleil: 20 Years Under the Sun.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Cirque du Soleil: 20 Years Under the Sun By Tony Babinski. New York: Abrams, 2004. 359 pages. Hardcover, $50. Delivering a unique blend of dance, acrobatics, and razzle-dazzle stagecraft, the Montreal-based company has virtually defined the...

Rasa: Performing the Divine in India.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Rasa: Performing the Divine in India By Susan L. Schwartz. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 118 pages, illustrated, cloth $59.50; paper, $22.50 The closing line of Susan Schwartz's text says much: "As the classical pose of Shiva...

Five college dance department: turns 25.(Teach-Learn Connection: Take 5)
March 1, 2005... NE MORNING last fall at Smith College's Scott Gym, 20 students dressed in all manner of shredded T-shirt-dancer-chic were engrossed in an intermediate modern dance class led by Mark Allan Davis. A former member of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance...

Cristyne Lawson.(Limelight)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... THOUGH she's retiring as dean and artistic director of the School of Dance at California Institute of the Arts after nearly 26 years, Cristyne Lawson is not going gently into that good night. The educator's plans include choreographing in...

Teacher's wisdom: Violette Verdy.(This Month)(Interview)
March 1, 2005... The vivacious Violette Verdy was a ballerina long before she came to dance for New York City Ballet in 1958, but many of her most beloved roles, including "Emeralds" in Jewels and Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, were created by George Balanchine...

Michelle Dorrance: this lanky hoofer was no Shirley Temple when she began performing rhythm tap as an 8-year-old.(On the Rise)
March 1, 2005... Michelle Dorrance Onstage, 25-year-old Michelle Dorrance exudes warmth while hitting hard. Hitting, in case, you didn't know, is how a tap dancer's foot lands on the floor. Dorrance, who appeared with Savion Glover and his Ti Dii group...

Is dance on Broadway in trouble? What you see depends on where you look.(On Broadway)
March 1, 2005... So is the glass half empty, or is the glass half full? It's understandable if Broadway dancers can't decide. Pessimists have plenty to be cheerful about. Of the three musicals that opened in the first half of this season, not one had a...

Next Wave festival.(Dance Review)
March 1, 2005... TANZTHEATER WUPPERTAL PINA BAUSCH, BALLET PRELJOCAJ, BANGARRA DANCE THEATRE, AND RALPH LEMON BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC, BROOKLYN, NY OCTOBER 19, 21-23, 26, 28-30, NOVEMBER 3-6, 16-21, 2004 Pina Bausch's newest work to come to the United...

Dance Umbrella 2004.(Critical Essay)
March 1, 2005... DANCE UMBRELLA 2004 VARIOUS VENUES, LONDON, ENGLAND OCTOBER 5-NOVEMBER 27, 2004 It was a good, not great, year for Britain's biggest and best-known contemporary dance festival. This year's 26th edition reached beyond North America and...

Ellis Wood Dance.(Dance Review)
March 1, 2005... ELLIS WOOD DANCE DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP, NEW YORK, NY NOVEMBER 17-20, 2004 Ellis Wood's two-part premiere, Hurricane Flora, is a riotous, satisfying, female Lord of the Flies. One reason is the visceral desperation, the barely contained...

ODC Dance.(Preview)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... ODC Dance (formerly ODC/SF) prides itself on making new dances, and founding artistic director Brenda Way unveils two of them in this spring's Dancing Downtown 2005, March 3-20 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, San Francisco. On a...

Dance Salad Festival.(Preview)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Latin influences prevail at the 13th annual Dance Salad Festival, at Houston's Wortham Theater Center, March 24-26. The coup d'etat this year is Mexico's Ballet de Monterrey, making its U.S. debut in a work by artistic director Robert Hill,...

Compagnie TcheTche.(Preview)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Chicago's AfroContempo Festival presents experimental choreographers from Africa with leading African American dancemakers, all delving into questions of race, culture, and heritage in different ways. In the three-month series, which includes...

Dame Alicia Markova (1910-2004).(Deaths)(Obituary)
March 1, 2005... One of the great ballerinas of the 20th century, Dame Alicia Markova died last December just after her 94th birthday. She was a Romantic ballerina of fugitive lightness, with a delicacy as much like steel as late. She had precise Cecchettistyle...

Zachary Solov (1923-2004).(Deaths)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
March 1, 2005... Zachary Solov, the former ballet master of the Metropolitan Opera, died in November at the age of 81. According to Dean Temple, who is writing his biography, Solov was a natural dancer. His parents were deaf so sign language was his first...

Serge Lavoie (1963-2004).(Deaths)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
March 1, 2005... Serge Lavoie, former principal dancer with The National Ballet of Canada, died of a heart attack in December at the age of 41. He was on tour as ballet master with Columbia City Ballet, where he had been for seven years. Lavoie, who graduated...

Uwe Scholz.(Deaths)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
March 1, 2005... Uwe Scholz, German choreographer and director of ballet at Leipzig Opera House, died following a serious illness in November. Scholtz, who was 45, had been chief choreographer and director of Zurich Ballet for six years starting in 1985. He...

Rachel D. Yocom.(Deaths)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
March 1, 2005... Rachel D. Yocom, dance educator, theorist, and author, died in November at the age of 88. Chairwoman of the dance department at New York's High School of the Performing Arts from 1954 to 1972 and a teacher there until 1975, Yocom trained a bevy...

Angela Leigh.(Deaths)
March 1, 2005... Angela Leigh, artistic advisor for Ballet Victoria, teacher, choreographer, and former principal dancer with The National Ballet of Canada, died in November at the age of 78.

Bahiya Sayyed-Gaines.(Births)
March 1, 2005... Bahiyah Sayyed-Gaines, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater principal dancer and one of Dance Magazine's 25 to Watch in 2003, and Jamel Gaines, artistic director of Creative Outlet, welcomed their baby boy Jeremiah Soleil Gaines into the world in...

Natalie Rogers.(Births)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Natalie Rogers, star dancer with Garth Fagan Dance Company, who was voted a favorite of DM readers (see "Reader's Choice," July 04) and her husband Dr. Andre Cropper announced the birth of their daughter, Iala Kitanyea Cropper, in December.

Xiao Nan Yu.(Births)
March 1, 2005... Xiao Nan Yu, principal dancer with The National Ballet of Canada, and her husband Shuang are the proud parents of a baby girl named Ava, born in November.

Dancescape: dance images past and present.
March 1, 2005... Svetlana Lutoshkina of Ballet Dumm, a Moscow duo, in Seasons, choreography by Lutoshkina & Sergei Margai, at Concert of Vortex Dance Center, near Pushkin Square, last October. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Schools, Studios, Colleges, Universities, Companies, Teachers, Dancers, Choreographers, Somatic Practices, Movement Arts, Dance Medicine, Yoga.(Dance Finder)(Directory)
March 1, 2005... United States ALABAMA ALABAMA BALLET Wes Chapman, Artistic Director Alice Cox, Director of External Affairs 2726 1st Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35233 (205) 322-4300; Fax (205) 322-4444 www.alabamaballet.org ALABAMA DANCE...

Heart and soul.(A Career & Learning Resource Guide)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... When Delfos Danza Contemporanca presented its first program in Mexico City in 1992, it won Mexico's prestigious National Dance Award. "We've always had a lot to live up to," says Claudia Lavista, who co-founded the company with fellow...

Attitudes.
March 1, 2005... THE HERITAGE that Paul Taylor absorbed while growing up in the modern dance scene was astonishingly productive and clear. He was a third generation pioneer in this fast developing cultural landscape, which first included the likes of Isadora...