Marcelo Gomes, Le Corsaire, July 7, 2012 (Ethan Stiefel’s final performance). Click for more photos of Marcelo.
Gomes to Receive Dance Magazine Award
ABT’s Marcelo Gomes will be one of five dance luminaries to receive the 2015 Dance Magazine Award along with lamenco star Soledad Barrio, National Ballet of Canada artistic director Karen Kain, dance historian, and archivist David Vaughan and Urban Bush Women founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. The ceremony will be December 7 at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in New York.
NYCB’s Financial Turnaround
Andrea Lois Becker points me an interesting video from CNN Money on NYCB’s financial turnaround over the past several years, also touching on the how the company is marketing itself by aligning with stars and fashion designers.
The Green Room Preview
Joan Acocella of The New Yorker provides background on The Green Room, which will be revived by ABT during its fall season from October 21-November 1.
Then a dim light goes up, and on an otherwise empty stage we see a huge figure, wearing a Roman helmet and made up like a skeleton, doing a terrible, ineluctable stamping dance. This is Death, who now begins his march. Boys muster, whipping their flags, eager to show their courage. Mothers weep, knowing what will happen. Abandoned wives find their way into brothels. Each scene ends with Death seizing a new victim. The clarity of the action is like something from a church fresco or, to name its true source, like the Dance of Death etchings that proliferated in Germany from the late Middle Ages onward, as plague, famine, and war scoured the Continent.
The role of Death will be played by Marcelo Gomes (October 22, 25, 27) and Roman Zhurbin (October 23, 28, 31).
Misty Copeland Movie Review
Rare Misty Copeland press that is not glowing from Lisa Jo Sagolla of Film Journal International. From her review of A Ballerina’s Tale, a documentary about Misty:
Copeland has been a soloist at ABT since 2007, is already 33 years old and has a fierce publicity machine that, for quite a few years, has been grabbing every opportunity it can to advertise her and the importance of her promotion to the general public. It’s hard not to view George’s film as an extension of that campaign, particularly when the closing credits list both Copeland and her personal manager as executive producers.
Notably absent from the documentary are interviews with any of Copeland’s fellow dancers at ABT or with any prominent dance critics, who have been writing about Copeland, not always glowingly, for many years. Their perspectives would have added immeasurably to our understanding of Copeland’s promotion and of the dancer herself…