Search results for: older dancers

Choreographer Jane Weiner melds dance and activism at her Houston center.     With her back to the audience, Jane Weiner bourrées across the stage in a part-homage, part-pun on Giselle’s second act. She re-enters with a grandiose string of technical feats ending in a tragic splat on the floor. Weiner nails the essence of […]

San Francisco Ballet’s Tina LeBlanc blends technique, verve, classicism—and range.     At best, judging dancers by their national origin is a fool’s game. But who can resist playing it when the dancer is Tina LeBlanc? Watch her perform for 20 minutes and you will know why she is the quintessential American ballerina.   The […]

The late Fernando Bujones’ account of the competition that made him a star.     Fernando Bujones was a spectacular bravura technician with superb partnering skills; his stage presence blended charm, courtesy, and an impish playfulness. Exceptionally clean and effortless in his approach, he influenced many of his peers, as well as students who saw […]

Salt Lake City’s Repertory Dance Theatre has created a living museum of classic 20th century choreography.     When the Rockefeller Foundation approached Linda C. Smith about the possibility of establishing a modern dance company in Salt Lake City, she was stunned. The idea of Rockefeller seed money underwriting a salaried professional repertory ensemble seemed […]

Irina Kolesnikova looks like a princess straight out of Russian fairy tales. The 25-year-old ballerina from Konstantin Tachkin’s St-Petersburg Ballet Theatre (SPBT) has a feminine, well-proportioned figure and soft, expressive arms. Her face is oval shaped with a high, open forehead; her green eyes look like lakes. Technically she is a strong, classical ballerina who […]

If you’ve seen the brilliant regalia and ferocious feet of today’s powwow dancers, you might wonder where these dances came from. Did the original women of America dress as colorfully and dance as vibrantly?      Long before Christopher Columbus, indigenous dance served religious and social functions among the many tribes that inhabited North America. […]

Christian Holder, one of the Joffrey Ballet’s acclaimed dancers of the past, is also a choreographer, teacher, and designer. Here he looks back on a rich period of the company’s 50-year history and ahead to dancing Ashton’s Cinderella, which premieres Oct. 4–15 at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University in Chicago. The Joffrey Ballet is […]

  It’s been 50 years since Arthur Mitchell joined the New York City ballet and became the first African American to rise to prominence in an American ballet company. Mitchell, who founded Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969, may be the most famous dancer to push open doors in the ballet world. But there were […]