One Year After Prince's Death, We're Remembering Him Through Dance
It feels like just yesterday that we were shocked with the news that pop icon Prince had passed away. Now it’s been a year since his untimely death, and we miss his dance-able music and intoxicating stage presence more than ever.
Though Prince was known for his genre-bending music, he was also a huge supporter of the dance community—and a captivating dancer himself. So it feels right to remember him by a few of his contributions to the dance world:
He was a Misty Copeland fan before she was a household name.
Before the promotion to principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre and the high-profile advertising campaigns, Prince saw something in Misty Copeland. He took her on tour with him off-and-on for almost four years, and according to Twitter, advocated for her promotion at ABT and told the company he was composing an opera that would star Copeland. So don’t mind us, we’ll just be dreaming about what that ballet would have looked like for the rest of our lives.
He composed our favorite ’90s pop ballet, “Billboards.”
When the Joffrey Ballet premiered Billboards in 1993, it was like nothing the ballet world had ever seen. (Prince was inspired to collaborate on a ballet after seeing the Joffrey perform a few years earlier.) Danced entirely to his songs, the work challenged ballet’s conventions by embracing popular music and featuring explicit sexuality.
And he inspired this stunning Syncopated Ladies tribute.
Our favorite tappin’ girl-power group created this video to Prince’s “When Doves Cry” a few weeks after his death. The Ladies’ signature rhythms complement one of Prince’s darkest songs perfectly.
