Sascha Radetsky takes a bow at his final ABT performance, July 3, 2014. Click for more photos of Sascha.
Congratulations to Sascha Radetsky, who received a fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts (CBA) at NYU. The center is the first international institute devoted to the creation and study of ballet. At CBA, Sascha will work on a novel set in the ballet world.
I interviewed Sascha last July on his substantial writing interests. The post has links to many of his articles.
According to the press release, the Fellowship program, entering its third term this fall, supports artists and scholars engaging in projects of a variety of disciplines related to the creation and study of ballet.
The CBA at NYU was launched in 2014 by former ballet dancer and prominent historian Jennifer Homans with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In the year since its founding, the CBA has helped to incubate and advance over a dozen ballet-related academic and artistic projects; hosted and sponsored numerous performances and events related to ballet and dance scholarship; and instituted, in cooperation with the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, a scholarship supporting the work of women choreographers.
According to Pia Catton of The Wall Street Journal the center is led by Homans,
…author of the best-selling 2010 book “Apollo’s Angels,” a history of ballet with a famously doom-and-gloom conclusion. “After years of trying to convince myself otherwise,” she wrote, “I now feel sure that ballet is dying.” To prevent that outcome, she established the Center for Ballet and the Arts last fall, inviting everyone from pop singers to puppeteers to come and shake up the dance world.
After Ms. Homans’s book was published, her assessment burned through the industry, sparking arguments and some resentment. It also caught the attention of the Mellon Foundation, which began a series of conversations with Ms. Homans about what could be done to change things.
Former ABT dancer John Selya also received a fellowship. At CBA, Selya will create movement and choreography to be used in the upcoming play, Après Moi, which tells the story of a gifted young dancer and her struggle to ascend in a renowned classical ballet company according to the NYU press release.