IU dance marathon raises $1.3M for Riley

By Francesca Jarosz, Posted: November 16, 2008 IndyStar.com | The Indianapolis Star

In the midst of a struggling economy, Indiana University’s annual dance marathon fundraiser garnered a record total this weekend.

The 36-hour dance-a-thon, which began Friday night and ended at 8 a.m. today at IU in Bloomington, raised more than $1.37 million for the Ryan White Infectious Disease Center at Riley Hospital for Children, higher than last year’s record of a little more than $1 million.

About 2,000 participants, including student dancers, volunteers and alumni were involved. Many stayed awake around the clock for the cause with the help of food, music and parents of Riley patients, who shared testimonials of the importance of the cause.

The fundraising total also included proceeds from five high school dance marathons, which IU helps to coordinate, said Jason Mueller, a spokesman for the Riley Children’s Foundation.

IU’s Dance Marathon started in 1991 in honor of Ryan White, an AIDS activist and Riley patient. It since has become the nation’s largest dance marathon that is affiliated with the Children’s Miracle Network.

Mueller said the proceeds benefit the area of the center where they’re most needed, whether it’s research, technology or other uses.

"To maintain the caliber of treatments patients need, it requires constant funding," Mueller said. "There's a reason for huge celebration when you have an amount of money like that coming in from a very special event. It"s a fantastic thing when you have so many people working for common cause to maintain level of care that takes place at Riley."

Mark Morris Dance Group/Royal Ballet of Flanders/Rambert Dance co. - the Sunday Times review

David Dougill is elevated by William Forsythe's Middle, but badly let down by Mark Morris's Romeo with a happy ending

Picture the scene. We are in Juliet's bedroom on the morning of her official wedding, and she, having swallowed Friar Laurence's potion (a distillation of Curaçao, to judge by its hue), is propped up against her pillows looking quietly but desperately ill. Enter her parents and nurse with her intended husband, Paris, who strums his mandolin like George Formby, then capers with an entertainment troupe of shimmying, whirling women and leaping men who unroll carpets and lay out jewels and liquors as in a bazaar. Not one of this concert party of 13 has cast a glance in Juliet's direction (though two of them are sitting on the bed). Only we, the audience, notice that she has gradually slumped down onto her face, and we may long to shout out: "She's behind you!"

We are intended to take this Monty Pythonesque episode seriously, however, along with others that test our suspension of disbelief, in Romeo and Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare, which the Mark Morris Dance Group, from New York, brought to the Barbican for its British premiere. This misguided production was sparked by the American musicologist Simon Morrison's discovery in Russian archives of Prokofiev's original 1935 version of the score, and its scenario by the composer and the dramatist Sergey Radlov, which flouted Shakespeare in having the lovers live happily ever after. It was banned by Stalin, who, though one hesitates to credit him, in this case showed taste.

In staging this version for the first time, Morris — usually such a joyful charmer in his works — proved the wrong man for the job. A three-act Romeo is a big task, and Morris fails to find a security of pitch or resonance. His Verona is a children's playground, it seems, as characters squabble unconvincingly and vie with each other in a plethora of obscene gesturing, when not gallivanting or pretty palm-patting. Allen Moyer's permanent decor of stripped-pine walls has no atmosphere; the marketplace is evoked by model houses; the fighting (of poor standard) is with wooden swords; the all-sorts costumes by Martin Pakledinaz could have come from an amateur theatrical property box — the acting, too.

Escalus, Prince of Verona (Joe Bowie, looking like Willard White as Othello), indulges in absurd processions, led by a pennant-bearer who leaps down onto the stage from the wings. Because there aren't many leading female roles in R&J, Morris casts women as Mercutio and Tybalt: Amber Darragh and Julie Worden, who are vigorous, in a thigh-slapping, principal-boy sort of way. Morris keeps his cast busy — even characters who are usually mime parts are dancing, including Friar Laurence (John Heginbotham, house- proud in his chic cell) — but you feel he is hard pressed to fill the music. His formal dances for the ballroom are unimpressive (and curious, with a hint of disco).

Lauren Grant's Nurse, bustly, skippy and earthy (she finds a nit in Juliet's hair), is one of the more successful characters.

The loving couple themselves lack oomph. In the cast I saw, Maile Okamura and Noah Vinson danced appealingly, and looked charming in a nude bed scene, but felt constrained by an almost perverse reserve in Morris's choreography. Apart from the lifts (Juliet often lifting Romeo), Morris seems to keep everything in the pas de deux low and understated. Romeo's little leg-lift motif, intended to express ecstasy, just looks mimsy. So does the apotheosis duet in a place called Elsewhere, against star-spangled nursery wallpaper. And this "original" ending is not, disappointingly, to unfamiliar music: merely reprises of previous themes. The LSO, under Stefan Asbury, played Prokofiev attractively, but, all told, this felt like a journey that wasn't really necessary.

Sadler's Wells is curating a Focus on Forsythe experience, which in the spring will include William Forsythe's company and a number of dance installation works (one involving hundreds of pendulums at Tate Modern). At the Wells, the Royal Ballet of Flanders gave his 1988 work Impressing the Czar, the first London showing in full (though it was in Edinburgh in 2007). This surreal extravaganza, unfailingly fascinating or unfathomably infuriating, according to taste, is a recherché satire on western cultural history, no less.

Characters include St Sebastian, the Brothers Grimm and a trio named Agnes, Rodger Wilcot and Mr Pnut, whose significance must be clear only to Forsythe. Segments of sharp, polished dance intersperse madcap mime and arcane activity. The middle section, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, is a widely known showpiece of Forsythe's twisted-classical style, which the company dance thrillingly. After an insufferable scene about an auction, we conclude with the irresistible finale of 40 dancers (both sexes), all dressed as schoolgirls, charging and skipping in circles, a ferociously zestful battalion. No other choreographer could conceive of — and bring off — anything quite like this.

Also at the Wells, Rambert Dance Company gave the London premiere of Mark Baldwin's Eternal Light. Howard Goodall's "requiem for the living" is sanctimoniously swoony, but excellently rendered by the orchestra and two choirs. The dancers have a grand sweep to them, and the solos and duets are clever and affecting, but the samey ensembles make the piece feel too long. The designs are overextravagant, but the dancers magnificent, as always.

Broadway again asks, Shall we dance?'

By Linda Winer - reprinted from the Stamford Times

When it comes to dancing with or without the stars, Broadway has been losing the beat to TV.

But, finally, here comes "Billy Elliot," the first dance-driven musical to promise kinetic liftoff since Twyla Tharp's "Movin' Out" moved out in 2005 after three boundary-defying years. (Be nice. We're not going to count her Bob Dylan misfire, "The Times They Are A-Changin'," which vanished in less than a month in 2006.)

The fact is that Broadway hasn't been a dance-happy place for far too long. Until "Billy Elliot" -- now into its fourth year in London -- landed at the Imperial Theatre Thursday, the most dazzling steps on Broadway lately had been performed by the horses in "Equus" -- and they don't sing.

"Billy," of course, is based on the 2000 movie about an 11-year-old boy's improbable ballet dreams amid the coal-miners' strike in North England, circa the '80s and Margaret Thatcher. The show, like the film, has been directed by Stephen Daldry and choreographed by Peter Darling to include ballet, tap and acrobatics. Unlike the movie, there is a score by Elton John.

There was a time, not so long ago, when dance broke away from the word-dominated conventions of the Broadway theater. As recently as 1999, we had Susan Stroman's "Contact" -- a virtually wordless trilogy of dance plays that won the Tony Award for best musical. Like "Movin' Out," this was a throwback to what became known in the '70s as the "dansical."

"Billy" is a book musical, not a dansical. Still, dance is the dramatic material about a working-class kid who, against all odds, has a gotta-dance compulsion for ballet.

It is generally agreed that the American musical's so-called golden age began with "Oklahoma!" in 1943 and extended through "My Fair Lady" in 1956 -- though I like to include "Gypsy" in '59 and even "Cabaret" in '66. What made these shows golden was the delicate balance of the four elements of the musical -- story, music, dance and spectacle.

By the '60s, however, many of America's best storytellers were seduced away from theater by the money and popularity of TV and movies. Except for Stephen Sondheim, the most interesting young musicians wanted to grow up to be Bo Diddley, not Richard Rodgers. This left the choreographers -- Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett, Bob Fosse, Tommy Tune -- who filled the creative vacuum by taking over direction of the entire vision of the stage.

By 1975, Bennett shaped the stories of Broadway dancers into "A Chorus Line," and Fosse followed with a pure-dance variety show called "Dancin'." But Bennett and Fosse are dead. And long before Robbins died, he had abandoned theater for ballet. Tune mysteriously stopped working years ago (though he has surfaced this season in Chicago with a new show called "The Turn of the Century"). Until Stroman expanded from choreographer to director, the musical had a huge hole where important dancing was supposed to be.

This explains the rise of the spectacle-driven British mega-musical in the mid-80s. Their books were familiar potboilers that required little original storytelling. The score, usually by Andrew Lloyd Webber, was new music that sounded like music we had heard before. There was little or no dance. And instead of bodies hurtling through space, we had falling chandeliers and flying helicopters and French revolutionaries on turntables.

In the late '90s, Broadway dance began to rediscover its humanity. In addition to the wonderful "Contact," we had a cheesy but dance-driven show called "Fosse" and a clueless "Footloose" -- the latter typified by a rebel teen describing dance to the stuffy city fathers as "a party in my pants." There was also a dopey paint-by-numbers adaptation of the iconic 1977 disco movie "Saturday Night Fever."

Even the worst of those, however, had moments of ecstasy. By that, I mean genuine rhapsodic transformations in the good old bacchanalian sense of the word -- that is, sudden moments when the concerns of words are given up in the unexpected power of primal physicality.

The message is that dance can touch us in places where words cannot go. It seems unlikely that the seasons' other two musicals, "Shrek" and a revival of "Pal Joey," will be dance shows, though the radical new revival of "West Side Story" promises Robbins' original choreography. After directing two big Mel Brooks shows, Stroman is working on a new dance musical. Perhaps those and "Billy Elliot" will bring the kick back to Broadway.

NBC hits dance floor with Olympic-style contest

Fri Nov 14, 2008 8:49pm EST by By James Hibberd - reprinted from Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC is putting some Olympic-style competition back in primetime with a new dance series from the producers of "American Idol" and "So You Think You Can Dance."

The show, with the working title "Superstar Dancers of the World," will feature professional dancers from eight countries exhibiting different performance styles. "Lord of the Dance" Michael Flatley will host.

Simon Fuller, the creator of the "Idol" talent franchise, will executive produce alongside fellow Brit Nigel Lythgoe, a former "American Idol" producer who created and serves as a judge on "So You Think You Can Dance."

Given the success of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" and Fox's "Dance," Lythgoe said he was initially skeptical about launching another dance show. Once Fuller explained the Olympics hook, however, he was sold.

"It's the 'Olympic Games of dance' -- everybody gets it right away," Lythgoe said. "Dancing has taken off in this country, the Olympics took off in this country; here we're bringing them both together. It's not just celebrities and their partners trying to dance or young people attempting to be great dancers. These are the great dancers."

Each country's team will present two dance soloists, a duet and a group. Their performances will be graded by judges from each participating country.

The judges have a tricky job as each country will perform in a different style unique to their culture -- Shaolin monks from China vs. Bollywood dancers from India, for example. Troupes from Ireland, the U.S., Argentina, Russia and South Africa also are represented.

NBC is launching the series early next year. Nine hours are ordered, and the current plan is to air four two-hour episodes and a one-hour finale. Several titles have been considered, with "Dance Masters of the World" and "Superstar Dancers of the World" as two of the top contenders.

The series will be the first title produced by Lythgoe and Fuller's new company, which is called Big Red 2 Entertainment.

The name is inspired by the producers' favorite soccer teams, which both use red as their team color. NBC also is a producer on the series, whose international flair could result in an improved shot at overseas distribution.

Learn how to dance like the stars

By Kristen Schorsch on November 13, 2008 1:57 PM - reprinted from the SouthtownStar.com

Here's your chance to learn the moves of celebrities shaking their hips and gliding across the dance floor on "Dancing With The Stars."

Heart & Sole Dance studio, 7038 183rd St., is offering a scholarship worth $265 for children ages eight to 16 to learn how to ballroom dance in the spring.

To apply, fill out an application, write an essay about ballroom dance and provide a letter of recommendation. Find the full scholarship packet at www.heartsoledance.com, at the studio or call (708- 5-DANCES) and the studio will mail you a packet.

When the semester ends, students will showcase their new skills during a recital.

"Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About" to Debut on PBS in February 2009

By Andrew Gans reprinted from Playbill.com12 Nov 2008

"Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About," a two-hour film about the life of the late director-choreographer, will make its premiere on PBS in February 2009.

Part of Thirteen/WNET's American Masters series, the Robbins profile is scheduled to air in the New York metropolitan area Feb. 4, 2009; check local listings.

Directed and produced by Judy Kinberg and written by Robbins biographer Amanda Vaill, the film is narrated by Ron Rifkin ("Brothers & Sisters," Broadway's Cabaret).

The documentary, according to WNET, "features excerpts from [Robbins'] personal journals, archival performance footage, and never-before-seen rehearsal recordings, as well as interviews with Robbins himself and over forty witnesses – among them Mikhail Baryshnikov; Jacques d'Amboise; Suzanne Farrell; Arthur Laurents; Peter Martins; Frank Rich; Chita Rivera; Stephen Sondheim; and Robbins' Fiddler collaborators Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joseph Stein."

In a statement Susan Lacy, creator and executive producer of WNET's American Masters, said, "Robbins' remarkable body of work forever redefined dance and musical theater for a contemporary audience. The revival of West Side Story on Broadway this winter just validates his lasting importance, his lasting impression. We are thrilled to air this film in tribute to Robbins' genius, celebrating the 90th anniversary of his birth."

Robbins is perhaps best known for directing and choreographing such Broadway musicals as West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof and Gypsy.

Pilobolus' weightless art continues to expand boundaries of modern dance

Pilobolus' weightless art continues to expand boundaries of modern dance

Posted by Michael Huebner November 09, 2008 6:00 AM - reposted from al.com

PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATRE
When: Saturday, Nov. 15, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $35-$75; students, $20. Call 975-2787 or go to www.alysstephens.org.
Where: Sirote Theatre, Alys Stephens Center. 2100 10th Ave. South.
Contains nudity.

PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATRE FOR KIDS
When: Sunday, Nov. 16, 2:30 p.m.
Tickets: $10, $7 for children. Call 975-2787 or go to www.alysstephens.org.
Where: Sirote Theatre, Alys Stephens Center. 2100 10th Ave. South.

To join Pilobolus, it might help to be part dancer, part martial artist and part acrobat, but founder and co-artistic director Jonathan Wolken says there are no specific qualifications.

In rare instances when there are openings for the seven full-time slots in the renowned dance company from Washington, Conn., Wolken looks for "keen physicality, maybe even rabid physicality -- someone who's really energetic, but also someone who is smart."

That leaves out most of us, but the formula has worked since 1971, when Wolken, Moses Pendleton, Alison Chase and other Dartmouth College colleagues formed the innovative troupe. Wolken adapted the name from a black fungus found in the excrement of cattle and horses, and the biological moniker has stuck. It occasionally gives scientific titles to its works, such as "Pseudopodia," Symbiosis," "Bugonia" and "Spyrogyra."

A piece on its Alys Stephens Center programs Saturday, for example, is called "Ocellus."

"Ocellus is a primitive eye that insects have," Wolken explained. "Insects generally have three of them, which are meant to sense differently than their compound eyes. The meaning has little to do with the dance."

Why all the biology?

"My father was a biophysicist, and I worked in his laboratory," he said. "There was a time when I thought I would be following that path."

Modern dance has benefited from Wolken's career diversion, to a point where Pilobolus has rewritten the rules. Its genre-bending performances, which involve eye-popping body contortions and entanglements, gravity-defying movements, weight-sharing poses, and often nudity, have taken dance to places that were previously unimaginable. Its 2004 Birmingham performance exemplified its combination of muscularity and emotional content, as well as the illusion of weightlessness.

BUT IS IT DANCE?

Some critics have questioned whether it can even be called dance.

"That's a great subject -- what constitutes dance," said Wolken. "We've always taken great latitude with it. We've expanded the boundaries of human motion, but not because we undertake to expand them, per se. It's just the natural process. When I go in the studio, I search for a certain newness and freshness. Often that pushes the boundaries."

Yet much about Pilobolus has remained unchanged in its 37 years. Wolken cited its inventiveness, intensity, balance between theatricality and abstraction, and individuality.

"There are so many things in which dance allows you leeway as a visual art," he said. "As in all artistic encounters, you bring yourself to the piece. There's a rich interaction that is unpredictable and very personal. Pilobolus' sense of invention, humor and un-self-consciousness have stayed exactly the same."

A mix of new pieces and works from the early 1970s will be shown at two shows on Saturday. "Lanterna Magica" (2008) is half narrative and half abstract, what Wolken describes as "a takeoff on 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' nothing too literal, and the magic of the fog of reality."

"Razor: Mirror (2008)" explores the lines between rationality and irrationality, saneness and insanity in an entertaining, but serious way. As its title suggests, "Megawatt" (2004) is full of energy, and is choreographed to music by Primus, Radiohead and Squarepusher. "Ocellus" and "Pseudopodia" are revivals from Pilobolus' early days.

"It's not daring and controversial anymore," Wolken said. "I think we got over that a long time ago."

For younger audiences, there will be a children's show next Sunday that will contain no nudity. "Walklyndon" and "Pseudopodia" are planned, as well as an interactive segment that explains Pilobolus' creative process.

"Lanterna Magica" will close the kids' show.

"It's a piece they will understand instantly," Wolken said. "It's playful, and not too heavy, so kids can find their way into it and adults can find different paths into it."

Chapin dance students admit to lacing brownies with laxatives

Posted: Nov 11, 2008 10:53 AM

EL PASO, Texas -- Three Chapin High School dance students have admitted to lacing brownies intended for the Andress High School dance team with laxatives, El Paso ISD officials said Tuesday.

The three students were suspended for three days and will be placed in an alternative placement for the remainder of the semester.

The students denied allegations that the brownies contained other inappropriate ingredients, officials said. The EPISD police will be sending the brownies to a lab to be analyzed.

The students, all 17, admitted that they intended to give the brownies to the Andress High School dance team at their rival game last Friday.

"The safety of EPISD students is always our number one priority and we are determined to find the truth," said Dr. Carla Gonzales, principal of Chapin, in a news release. "Further disciplinary measures and potential charges are pending."

"We're grateful that the plan was discovered and no one was harmed. We hope that the actions of these three students do not tarnish the good relationship we have with Andress High School. When it is game time we are rivals, but off the field we are part of the Northeast community and truly support each other," Gonzales said.

Whiplash Footwork and Not a Moment of Hesitation

Dance Review | New Generation Dance Company

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY
Published: November 10, 2008 - NYTimes.com

Most of us don't expect that a man wearing a jacket and tie and laced-up shoes will, without doing any huge jumps or multiple turns, prove himself a superb virtuoso dancer. That, however, just means that most of us (myself included) forget what the tango can achieve. New York's third annual Latin American Cultural Week, which began last Wednesday, has brought a variety of dancing: of the few items I saw last week, some were merely uninteresting, others not remotely serious. On Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, that festival coincided with the appearance of the tango-related New Generation Dance Company at Symphony Space; most of its program, though intensely serious, was scarcely more interesting.

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

"Volver al Sur": Natalia Hills and Gabriel Misse, guest artists of New Generation Dance Company, performing "Ataniche" in a tango program at Symphony Space.

Related
Video of the New Generation Dance Company

Andrea Mohin/ The New York Times

Guillermina Quiroga and Cesar Coelho in "Volver al Sur."

But the New Generation program "Volver al Sur" ("Return to the South") featured four guest artists: Guillermina Quiroga and Cesar Coelho, and Natalia Hills and Gabriel Misse. Where many others, including the New Generation artistic director and choreographer Dardo Galletto, toy with the tango and dilute it out of recognition, these two couples at once swept the audience into the steps, rhythms, body language and music that are the tango's essence. And with each appearance — each pair doing four duets during the program — they took on not just new costumes but also new moods, revealing still more of what the tango can be.

Ms. Quiroga and Mr. Coelho often showed the fluent legato that can make the tango so insidiously seductive. Her manner tended to be refined and enigmatic, whereas his was the brusque assertiveness of the self-made man, and at first this contrast made their partnership exciting. The way she maintained her dignity while her spine arched back in a beautiful display of ardor or while she was being lifted had its beauties. All too soon, though, their over-reliance on showy lifts and catches became tiresome. Not even Ms. Quiroga can look ladylike in a dress when being held overhead with arms and legs spread-eagled and being rotated like helicopter blades.

Ms. Hills and Mr. Misse, on the other hand, started fast in "Ataniche," at once showing how electrifying milonga/tango footwork can be, and what started as an instant thrill on my part grew into rapture. To be more specific, Ms. Hills — though she wears eyelashes so substantial that, if fluttered, they could airlift them both to Poughkeepsie — is a completely appealing and stylish dancer: delightful at a brisk tempo, sensuous at any pace and riveting in tiny points, like slowly bringing feet together or, at leisure, extending a leg at calf height.

But Mr. Misse is a paragon and phenomenon. The program says he has studied with "the greatest masters of tango: Miguel Angel and Antonio Todaro" and also with the "greatest milongueros of the golden age of tango: Pepito Avellaneda, Portalea, Villarrazo and Turco Jose," and that he has toured with Miguel Angel Zotto's Tango X2 company with "Una Noche de Tango." He's not an Adonis; he's elegant without glamour. His face (clean-shaven, unlike Mr. Coelho, and with a beautiful jaw line) and broad-chested physique are agreeably handsome.

But his partnering makes him irresistible: the intimacy between him and Ms. Hills was glorious. In "Bahia Blanca" they never varied the formal tango embrace, with his hand on her back, one of her hands resting on his shoulder, and his other hand clasping hers. Their torsos addressed each other powerfully as they traveled around the stage, always maintaining the same column of space between them, while often twisting against it, this way and that.

Their heads, however, were inclined gravely toward each other, their eyes lowered throughout, and the only other parts of their bodies that touched were their cheeks, nestling close in an effect of heart-rending tenderness. Neither here nor anywhere else did he ever lift her high or spin her in any showy effects.

Which is not to say that their dancing was less than sensational. Tango delights in rapid-fire, on-the-spot cross-stitch steps, in which the dancer's feet and knees keep crossing each other with crazy, marvelous insistence, or in scuttling hem-stitch steps that scoot the dancer across the stage, and both Ms. Hills and, especially, Mr. Misse are wonderful at these

Then Mr. Misse, while partnering, does more. Steering Ms. Hills across the stage in "Reliquias Portenias," he suddenly does an amazing skip-trip step, with such height and pouncing alacrity, twice, that the audience applauds through the music. In one rapidly retreating sequence in "Bahia Blanca" his feet do rippling, heel-toe trills. (Though this may sound like tap dance, it never breaks the tango's elegance.) These are feet that sew, knit, embroider, dart and catch.

Meanwhile, their owner seems steadily driven by a calm current of attraction to his partner that seems in one dance the essence of comic brio, in another the epitome of tragic resignation. On the strength of this one viewing, I don't hesitate to call him one of the most intoxicating dancers I have seen.

Where have you been? I'm back!

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