Word: balletic
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...Down,” the best executed of the two world premieres, provides an impressive display of dynamic dancing and emotional tension through its skillful performers and innovative choreography. While modern and creative, it also remains firmly grounded in its classical ballet origins—making it the most technically difficult work of the night. Although the use of nonchalant exits—different groupings of 12 dancers simply walk offstage—is often more distracting than refreshing, it is offset by the growing intricacy of the groupings themselves. The final ones are particularly impressive—the principal...
...It’s really hit or miss.” Several dancers said that although the competition had great prizes, their motivation for participating was just to enjoy themselves. Andrea Zimmerman of NYU, said she got into ballroom dancing after she gave up becoming a professional ballet dancer. Zimmerman and her partner were eliminated in the quarterfinals, but she said she was not particularly concerned with winning. “Mostly, I just wanted to do the very best I could,” she said. Over 25 colleges entered teams in the event. Harvard finished in either third...
...these guests at a midnight supper in Paris' fashionable Majestic Hotel in May 1922 were the best-known artists of the age: impresario Serge Diaghilev, writers James Joyce and Marcel Proust, painter Pablo Picasso and composer Igor Stravinsky. Ostensibly they were there to celebrate the premier of Stravinsky's ballet Le Renard, performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The real reason: so a wealthy English arts patron, Sydney Schiff, could bring together the giants he worshipped. In A Night at the Majestic, Richard Davenport-Hines brilliantly reimagines this unique-in-art-history event, setting the five-star diners in their...
When Fidel Castro seized control of Cuba in 1959, who would have guessed that one of the items high on his agenda would be launching a national ballet company? Yet the idea fit right in with his revolutionary goal of bringing art to the masses. Castro asked Cuba's prima ballerina, Alicia Alonso, and her dancer husband Fernando how much they would need to make it happen. They said $100,000. Castro gave them $200,000. The investment has been paying off ever since...
...Alonsos created a company steeped in the classical disciplines of French, Italian and especially Russian ballet. To fill its ranks, they started a tuition-free school with satellite academies in every province of the country. They scoured local schools and sports camps for young talent, regardless of the student's background. Graduates who didn't become performers became teachers. The result, as Alonso says, is "a Cuban school of ballet that is appreciated all over the world...