CANNES, France — The Carolyn Carlson Company had just finished the last performance of the two-week Cannes Dance Festival on December 11, and festival director Brigitte Lefèvre took the stage to start a post-show conversation. But Carlson isn’t very talkative. Instead of debating his own piece, he started a small mime routine in which Lefèvre …
Continue reading “Ballet’s Disciplined Rebel Brigitte Lefevre Takes Next Steps”
It was 1976, and seven years after Jerome Robbins’ ballet “Dances at a Gathering” premiered, it was still a hit. “Everybody wanted to see it,” choreographer Peter Anastos said in a recent interview. “This thing is perfectly ripe for a parody,” I thought. As the founder of all-male comics Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte CarloAnastos, …
Continue reading “Les Ballets Trockadero’s Witty Brain Coming Home”
LONDON – “Be like a jellyfish,” said Wayne McGregor, expressively waving his upper body. One afternoon recently, the dancers on the dark stage of the Royal Opera House looked at him for a moment. Then they tried to be like the jellyfish as a whole. McGregor, resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet, laughed. “Wonderful!” she …
Continue reading ““An Allegory for Our Time”: The Royal Ballet’s “Dante Project””
Before the pandemic, Clara Miller had a secret she kept from the dance world at the New York City Ballet. Well, the janitors knew. After dance performances, he would look for empty studios to rehearse. But he wasn’t dancing. Armed with his voice and a piano, he wrote and sang songs—sometimes, he recalled, never raising …
Continue reading “‘Can I Really Sing?’ Meet the New York City Ballet’s Songbird”