News: David Hallberg Bolshoi contract details leaked!
Sep
24
2011
Our top-secret Russian connections have reported back to arts·meme global headquarters with little-known details of the David Hallberg/Bolshoi Theatre contract. It’s all in the fine print! While bringing the boyish blonde bombshell into the Bolshoi Ballet fold, there have been, shall we say, glitches. The Russians expressed skepticism, yes, ~ suspicion, distrust ~ about the ...
Tutu Taylor
It was a hell of a week for ballet. Our most brilliant male ballet dancer, a true wunderkind, a homegrown wonder, David Hallberg, got a job offer from the Bolshoi Ballet, better, obviously, than his current gig with American Ballet Theatre. So off he goes. Hallberg’s young, 29, he doesn’t speak the language, and Russia ...
Backward-leaning Bolsheviks, er…Bolshoi men
The hiring of David Hallberg by the Bolshoi Ballet, founded in the late 18th century, is being trumpeted as a sign of Russian openness and progress. But an arts·meme investigation indicates that rather than Hallberg moving the stodgy Russians forward, they are already pulling him back. Please refer to the image at left in which ...
More aching ballet-world news: Edward Villella to retire from his great achievement, Miami City Ballet, after next season 2
Sep
22
2011
Just as we digest the news that ABT’s young prince, David Hallberg, will dance only part of his season in the U.S. and spend the preponderant part in Moscow, along comes a startling piece of dance news, an announcement from Miami. Another prince of ballet, this one a veteran, Edward Villella, will retire at the ...
What makes a balletomane? A lean.
Sep
21
2011
If when peering at this Andrea Mohin photo for the New York Times … ~your heart picks up pace, ~ it messes you up, ~ you “get it,” ~ you feel deep joy … seeing the way that David Hallberg is leaning away from his “Giselle” partner, Natasha Osipova, well then … mazel tov, you’re ...
Invertigo Dance Theatre’s fun with clutter
Sep
21
2011
This image (clickable) from Invertigo Dance Theatre’s upcoming “Fun in Limbo” caught my eye. The amusing furniture-mountain was inspired, says choreographer Laura Karlin, by the Mother of all Hoarders, Miss Havisham, from Dickens’s Great Expectations. The nutty pile of junk gives physical form to the insane overabundance of data and objects swirling ’round all of ...
How could this happen? David Hallberg joins Bolshoi Ballet 2
Sep
21
2011
In a tremendous blow to American ballet, our best home-grown talent, literally a corn-fed farm boy from South Dakota, David Hallberg, 29, announced today that he is joining the Bolshoi Ballet. Ka-thunk. This caps off, in one stunning announcement, twenty years, at a minimum, of Europe stealing the U.S.’s thunder as the global bastion of ...
Jorma Elo’s smart-looking “Overglow”
Sep
18
2011
We haven’t seen “Overglow” yet. It was created just this past summer in the mystical terrain of Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, superstar choreographer, Jorma Elo, sculpted “Overglow,” set to music by Beethoven and Mendelssohn, on the bending human pretzels of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, located outside Washington ...
Serenade: C’est un ballet abstrait.
Everything sounds better in French. That’s a given. But beyond sounding beautiful, the lovely and poetic program note posted below tackles the hard job of putting the ephemeral into words. What’s the subject? “Serenade,” a ballet that in its making, and in the viewing of it, touches God. C’est un ballet abstrait. C’est- á-dire, sans intention ...
Line-up of geniuses: West Side Story’s Broadway creative/production team
The West Side Story Broadway production team in 1957: (l. to r.) lyricist Stephen Sondheim, scriptwriter Arthur Laurents, producers Hal Prince and Robert Griffith (seated), composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins. (click for detail) Thank you, songbook1, for posting this photo. Like this? Read more: Not a Jet, but still the swingingest thing: George ...