Search results for: jason samuels smith

Here are the latest promotions, appointments and departures, as well as notable awards and accomplishments, from the last month. Comings & Goings Ángel García Molinero has joined Boston Ballet as a soloist, Michaela DePrince as a second soloist. Laura and Jerome Tisserand have joined Les Ballets des Monte-Carlo. Christopher Bruce has stepped down from his […]

Here are the latest promotions, appointments and departures, as well as notable awards and accomplishments, from the last month. Comings & Goings Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has been named director of Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, beginning June 2022. He will remain with Royal Ballet of Flanders until the close of its 2021–22 season. Cathy […]

In Episode 1 of Black Dance Stories, a web series that launched on June 25, 2020, Stefanie Batten Bland talks about how she has no childcare. In another episode, Leslie Parker Zooms from the Twin Cities, where she is having solo rehearsals at a theater three blocks from the epicenter of the George Floyd protests. […]

Spring is in the air, and performance calendars are (dare we say it?) almost as busy as they ever have been, if still largely housed on the internet. This mix of online screenings, outdoor events and indoor performances for limited audiences caught our eye this month. Caged In Stefanie Batten Bland’s Kolonial Maria Baranova, Courtesy […]

There may be no more iconic opening montage in all of dance TV history than Debbie Allen as Lydia Grant on “Fame.” “You’ve got big dreams. You want fame,” she tells students at the fictional NYC High School for the Performing Arts. “Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying—in sweat.” Allen […]

Hoofer Jumaane Taylor’s newest work, Ugly Flavors, collides tap dance with two musical scores known for their difficulty and dissonance: Ornette Coleman’s album The Shape of Jazz to Come and “The Rite of Spring,” by Igor Stravinsky. Taylor, a Chicago native, trained at Sammy Dyer School of the Theatre, one of the places where he […]

I turned to tap at the outset of the European lockdown as a meaningful escape from the anxiety of the pandemic. As a dance historian specialized in dance film, I’ve seen my fair share of tap on screen, but my own training remains elementary. While sheltering in place, my old hardwood floors beckoned. I wanted […]

Thirty years ago, U.S. Joint Resolution 131, introduced by congressman John Conyers (D-MI) and Senator Alphonse D’Amato (R-NY), and signed into law by President G. W. Bush declared: “Whereas the multifaceted art form of tap dancing is a manifestation of the cultural heritage of our Nation… Whereas tap dancing is a joyful and powerful aesthetic […]