Category: Dance Chatter

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DANNY TIDWELL UPDATE

 

You guys! I missed So You Think You Can Dance again last night! I thought it was on on Thursdays (wasn’t it on Thursday last week?) and was all set to tape tonight when commenter Jonathan sent me an email asking me what I thought of the second week of auditions. Argh. Trying to find somewhere online to watch re-runs…

Can’t they wait till ballet season is over?! Seriously, it wasn’t on this early last year right? I don’t remember it conflicting with Blackpool, ABT, and NYCB like this.

Anyway, in lieu of a post on this week’s show, I thought I’d just link to this Rickey post (which is where I got the pic above from), which commenter Jonathan sent me. Thank you, Jonathan!

Apparently, Danny Tidwell will be in the Broadway cast of Memphis, which is scheduled to open in the Fall, and will be in Fire Island over the summer for the Fire Island Dance Festival.

It’s always interesting to keep up with the SYTYCD dancers and see what becomes of their careers, if and how the show has helped them. So far we have Danny and Neil Haskell on Broadway, Sabra in a very cool NY-based contemporary ballet company, Chelsie Hightower and Dmitry Chaplin on Dancing With the Stars… I wish Danny would come back to ABT but I know that’s not going to happen. But it’s okay — there are plenty of fabulous dancers there to keep me in a pretty constant state of awe 🙂

For others who missed last night’s show, I find Ballroom Dance Channel does a good job of straight-forward reviews.

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WHY NOT MORE JOHN CRANKO IN THE US?

 

 

My friend, Mika, who is half Austrian, half Japanese and who spends a significant amount of time abroad was asking me the other day why I thought there wasn’t much of John Cranko’s work performed here when his ballets are so popular in Europe. I didn’t know. But I do know from some of Evan and Patricio’s Winger posts that his ballets are widely performed elsewhere, including obviously Chile. I was intrigued

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MERCE AT 90

 

So, this weekend marked choreographer Merce Cunningham‘s 90th birthday, with celebrations and performances of his latest work — Nearly Ninety— at BAM. Unfortunately I was unable to go — and Apollinaire reminds me just how much I missed — but I decided to compile a list of some reviews since this was such a momentous occasion (many consider Cunningham to be the greatest living choreographer, or the greatest living American choreographer; some consider him to be the last left of the greats):

Macaulay goes even farther and calls Cunningham “the greatest living artist since the death of Samuel Beckett”;

Tobi Tobias hails the choreographer, but critiques Nearly Ninety as well as the decision to let famed dancer Holley Farmer go;

Leigh Witchel describes Nearly Ninety as “dreamlike” in the NY Post;

Blogger Evan Namerow of Dancing Perfectly Free talks about the role of chance operations in NN;

Aynsley Vandenbrouke says NN is Merce’s “ode to his dancers”;

Jordan Hruska calls NN “Bionic Theater” in the Times Magazine’s blog;

New York Magazine’s Daily Intel blog blurbs mainly on the wheelchair-bound curtain call, etc.;

WWDLifestyle has a short list of some celebs who attended the post-performance party on Thursday night;

and here’s a YouTube performance clip from ArtRavels;

And, here are a couple of pre-performance overviews, from NYTimes and NY Magazine.

Apparently, NN will now travel to Madrid.

UPDATE: Also, here is Apollinaire Scherr’s review in the Financial Times. (I’m very happy to see, by the way, that she is now the dance critic for FT!) And here are more of her thoughts on the program and the Cunningham dancers on her Foot in Mouth blog.

And Eva Yaa Asantewaa in Dance Magazine.

Please let me know if I missed anyone.