by Jacquelyn Thayer “Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” was the quote that kept intruding upon me, quietly but insistently, while watching the debut of the Joffrey Ballet’s made-for-digital Boléro, a 16-minute piece choreographed by company artist Yoshihisa Arai and starring Anais Bueno, set to Maurice Ravel’s infamously repetitive composition. Not to…
Has the hour time cap forced So You Think You Can Dance‘s producers to tighten focus for Season 14 — highlighting both talent and stylistic diversity on a weekly basis, giving viewers less of the most conventional contemporary auditions and more ballroom, more varied hip hop, and a smattering of specialty styles? While the competitive…
Ballet companies worldwide have already passed months in preparations and performances, but it was only on December 18 in 1892 that The Nutcracker, as choreographed, to some disputed degree, by Lev Ivanov and Marius Petipa, made its stage debut at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre. For as many choreographic interpretations seen in the century-plus since, from…
For this post-World Ballet Day Wednesday Watch, enjoy Twyla Tharp’s efforts to integrate the feel of social dance and a little retro style into the world of balletic technique, with this 1984 broadcast of her 1983 Sinatra Suite — a truncated version of the previous year’s longer Nine Sinatra Songs, which calls for casting a…
In honor of two upcoming national holidays — the Fourth of July in the U.S. and Canada Day on July 1 — this Wednesday Watch is dedicated to some truly North American treasures. Few composers are more quintessentially connected with America than Aaron Copland, and Martha Graham’s choreography for his Appalachian Spring is a foundational…
Heather Ogden and McGee Maddox in The Four Temperaments (Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann, courtesy of the National Ballet of Canada) by Jacquelyn Thayer Modes of modern form the surest throughline in the National Ballet of Canada’s mixed program featuring a pair of Balanchine classics and Alexander Ekman’s daring Cacti. While two pieces —…
It’s possible to argue that no dance genre more seriously underpins ice dance than ballet. For as much as the discipline’s social and competitive roots align with those of ballroom dance, ballet is a conventional element of figure skating education as a whole. Lines, general carriage and upper body movement translate fairly fluidly from the…
Taking on a Ravensburger Waltz with a classical ballet twist was a task Alexandra Paul and Mitch Islam were loath to take lightly. “Any time you tackle a new program, there are countless hours that go into researching, choreographing and perfecting the style of movement,” said Islam. “With a world-renowned style like ballet, you have…
by Jacquelyn Thayer Interview originally conducted in January 2015. Since opening their Motion Arts physical therapy and conditioning office in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Veronique and Peter Breen have seen the typical woes faced by any facility working closely with high-level athletes—like the greater Detroit area’s bumper crop of elite figure skaters. “There’s always the last…
Elegant and agile, few images in skating are more celebrated than that of the ballerina on ice, the dancer on blades. It’s away from the spotlight that the magic is born — through nine hour training days, frequent commutes or specialized injury. A childhood in the studio cedes to sessions in skates; a youthful career…
