by Chava Pearl Lansky | Sep 24, 2018 | News, Profiles
For the past year, companies worldwide have been celebrating Jerome Robbins’ centennial; he was born on October 11, 1918. Starting September 26, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center opens an exhibition celebrating Robbins which...
by Chava Pearl Lansky | Sep 12, 2018 | Dance History, Profiles, Viral Videos
This Thursday, we’re throwing it all the way back to Fanny Elssler, one of the most famous ballerinas of the Romantic period. Elssler may have graced stages far before the age of reality TV and Instagram, but her story is anything but dry. Last week, the...
by Chava Pearl Lansky | Jan 16, 2018 | News, Profiles
A telegram from Lincoln Kirstein to Arthur Mitchell inviting him to join New York City Ballet; an Al Hirschfeld drawing of Suzanne Farrell and Mitchell in Balanchine’s Slaughter on Tenth Avenue; a sparkly red and purple Firebird costume and headpiece from Dance...
by Chava Pearl Lansky | Dec 10, 2017 | Career, Dance History, Everything "Nutcracker"
Literary Roots E.T.A. Hoffmann, a German writer, penned the eerie and dark tale “Nutcracker and Mouse King” in 1816. About 30 years later, the French writer Alexandre Dumas took the Nutcracker story into his own hands, lightening things up and softening...
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...
