A “Nutcracker” for our times from Aspen Santa Fe Ballet
Jenelle Figgens, Pete Leo Walker Ed note: This story by Gillian Renault was originally written for The Younes & Soraya Nazarian Performing Arts Center and is reprinted on artsmeme with permission. The Soraya’s resident dance company, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, is capping off a quintet of annual appearances in Northridge this holiday season. Though best ...
Choreographer Cherice Barton spreads happiness at VPAC
Feb
22
2017
She’s part of a tribe of young dance makers who hop fluidly between entertainment hot-spots—Las Vegas, L.A.’s Staple Center, Broadway, and Hollywood. Clients include Katy Perry (at the Grammy Awards); George Lucas (in a Disney film); Spider-Man (vaulting above Broadway); and two darling daughters ages three and four. Relishing her return to the ballet world ...
All About Aspen Santa Fe Ballet 1
There are many reasons to be present at the Valley Performing Arts Center Saturday evening, April 16. Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, a premier and enduring western-based dance troupe, will appear in its first of three annual visits as the Center’s dance company in residence. Founded in 1996, the Aspen’ites (they straddle Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
Story of Tanaquil
We are so looking forward to Dance Camera West‘s special screening of “Afternoon of a Faun” at the Aero Theatre next Thursday evening, co-presented with the American Cinematheque. I will be interviewing Nancy Buirski, the documentary film’s director, after the screening. It portends to be an amazing event, mixing and matching a crowd of dance ...
Contemporary-choreography connoisseurs convene in Chicago
Oct
6
2013
A Western pow-wow of three dance chieftains… convened in the capitol of the midwest on the occasion of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet‘s weekend performance at Chicago’s Harris Theater. In the photo, ex-Joffrey Ballet men Adam Sklute, Tom Mossbrucker and Glenn Edgerton, directors, respectively, of Ballet West, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. ...
Richard Cragun’s lasting impact on Tom Mossbrucker
Aug
13
2012
Friend of arts·meme Tom Mossbrucker writes in memorium of Richard Cragun, the tall and imposing American-born danseur noble who forged a brilliant and distinguished career at Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet in the 1970s. Cragun, 67, died this past week shocking the dance world. A dancer of his vitality seemed to be eternal. Cragun was best known ...
Chillin’ with a ballerina by a babbling brook
Jun
18
2012
Diaghilev hung around Venice’s Lido Beach with Lifar. Balanchine cooked Sunday dinners for his favorites. Ballet impresarios need down time. If they genuinely enjoy their artistic charges, they hang around with them on their day off. Here’s the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet artistic and executive director duo, Tom Mossbrucker and Jean-Philippe Malaty, on a ...
Photog Herb Migdoll captures Eugene Loring’s “Billy the Kid” (1989) 5
Here’s an historic oddity: an American ballet about an American theme. It’s danced by an American dancer in an American company. Now this is getting tedious — it has a score by an American composer. It’s Eugene Loring‘s “Billy the Kid,” to a score by Aaron Copeland. Yes, we now live in a different world. ...
Robert Joffrey’s proteges remember him … on film and in person
Lots of interest in the Joffrey Ballet in advance of the fun, revealing, and memory-filled documentary, Joffrey Ballet: Mavericks of American Dance, which will receive nation-wide viewing this Saturday. Tom Mossbrucker, at left, memorable in the Joffrey’s production of Billy the Kid, choreography by Eugene Loring, was with the Joffrey organization from 1977 to 1998. ...