by Amy Brandt | Sep 11, 2017 | Career, Profiles
This year marks the 50th anniversary of George Balanchine’s Jewels, and companies around the world are paying homage. While last summer’s Lincoln Center Festival collaboration with New York City Ballet, Paris Opéra Ballet and Bolshoi Ballet was all...
by Chava Pearl Lansky | Jul 30, 2017 | Company Life, Nutrition
Who says dancers don’t eat? In 1979, the corps of American Ballet Theatre went on strike in a fight to increase their wages (starting corps members made a measly $235 a week). “We’re underpaid and overworked” said soloist Rebecca Wright in a...
by Caroline Hamilton | Jul 28, 2017 | Uncategorized
This year, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts, is celebrating its 85th season. Over the years, some of the world’s greatest dancers of the 20th and 21st century have performed here. But without the help of two of Britain’s...
by Amy Brandt | Jul 10, 2017 | Career
Ballet’s earliest history can be traced as far back as the royal courts of Renaissance Italy (roughly 200 years before France’s King Louis the XIV established the first ballet academy in 1661). Surprisingly, many of these court dances were written down and...
by Allan Ulrich | Nov 22, 2016 | Career
If you were a subscriber to a respectable repertory theater company, you would never tolerate a diet of lustful Saracen princes, troops of tots running around in blackface, upstart Roman slaves versed in Karl Marx, dark-skinned serving girls with bejeweled navels and...
by Amy Brandt | Oct 20, 2016 | Company Life
Imagine learning a 150-year-old ballet with nothing more than the choreographer’s yellowed, handwritten notes and an unfamiliar score to go on. Now, imagine that choreographer is none other than August Bournonville. For the last month, that’s exactly what...
by Marina Harss | Nov 24, 2015 | Career
This story originally appeared in the December 2015/January 2016 issue of Pointe. It’s a truth often repeated about ballet that it is an art with a strong oral tradition, handed down from generation to generation. Aspiring dancers learn the same steps that their...
by Emily Katz | Aug 2, 2015 | Training
This story originally appeared in the August/September 2015 issue of Pointe. When choosing a pre-professional program, many dancers focus on the number of hours they’ll spend training in the studio. But technique is only one ingredient in the recipe for making a...