Posts Tagged ‘Peter Martins’

Dance as a Luxury Product: the Post 9/11 Environment

Tuesday, September 16th, 2014

The Slovak National Dance Congress 2014 recently asked me to speak about the state of New York City dance. Since I’ve been living in New York City on and off since 1979, I felt up to the task. In the following slides (which have been converted into a movie), I tease out the changes that have occurred for New York City concert dancers following 9/11. What I found most striking (and dismaying) in my research was that the U.S. capital of Terpsichore is increasingly recognizing dancers and dance organizations not as the obvious—as artists and art groups—but as brands for luxury consumption.

Read the rest of this article »

The Seven Deadly Sins at City Ballet

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

New York City Ballet’s new staging of “The Seven Deadly Sins ,” which had its premiere at the company’s spring gala on May 11, puts Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s dark, sinister “ballet chanté” of 1933 into a new context: a tinsel-town soundstage, complete with unison hoofers in the grand finale. Choreographer Lynn Taylor-Corbett, whose credits include Broadway’s “Swing,” has essentially created a Cliff Notes version of this irony-laced yarn, dragging principal dancer Wendy Whelan and guest artist Patti Lapone through seven shallow scenes of human transgression and stripping the work of its brooding soul.

Read the rest of this article »

A New Apollo: Chase Finlay of New York City Ballet

Monday, May 9th, 2011

There is no better way to anoint a rising male ballet star than to award him the title role in George Balanchine’s “Apollo.” On May 5 at David R. Koch Theater, New York City Ballet corps dancer Chase Finlay hit the big time with “Apollo,” receiving three curt

Read the rest of this article »