Search results for: hamilton

Go behind the scenes at our July 2015 cover shoot with Melissa Hamilton!  

Hamilton may pave the way for hip hop in musicals A rap breaks out. Photo by Joan Marcus, Courtesy Hamilton. Given the Revolutionary War battles, pistol duels, political rivalries, sex scandals and explosive cabinet meetings taking place during Alexander Hamilton’s short, busy whoosh through American history, his life hardly seems to have the makings of […]

I still remember the day at the office when I heard that Andy Blankenbuehler was going to choreograph for a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton. Interesting, I thought, sincerely intrigued, yet skeptical. An urbanized song-and-dance story about the American Revolution? What an odd choice for a Broadway-aimed show. But hey, crazier things have happened. The […]

    For years, Dance Magazine readers have turned to Dr. Linda Hamilton to provide guidance on all things dance in her monthly column “Advice for Dancers.” Here, in a video with excerpts from a recent lecture Hamilton gave at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City, she shares several columns’ worth of advice on how to manage […]

In a perfect world, dance institutions would take the initiative to protect dancers from the abusive and dysfunctional work environments that still plague the industry. But after years of activism through their organization Whistle, which focuses on ending gender-based harm and other forms of abuse in dance by offering workshops and resources, Robyn Doty and Frances Chiaverini were finding that this wasn’t the reality of the field.

To the audience of a Broadway show, what’s being presented onstage is crisp, harmonious, and expertly crafted. But in most cases, the production has had a yearslong journey to that polished final product—a journey that often winds through one or more other theaters.

Broadway choreography has long been an amalgam of different social dances and forms like jazz, tap, and ballet. But today’s shows are increasingly using movement makers from genres outside the musical theater world altogether, like experimental dance (David Neumann, Annie-B Parson, Raja Feather Kelly), commercial dance (Sonya Tayeh, JaQuel Knight, Keone and Mari Madrid), modern dance (Camille A. Brown), and physical theater (Steven Hoggett).

For Deaf audiences, watching performances with traditional sign language interpretation can feel like watching a tennis match: Their focus has to toggle between whatever is happening onstage and the interpreter, often off to the side, who might be communicating what the music sounds like or what’s being said. That’s if the performance even has an interpreter, which all too often is not the case.