"To say that the film, sumptuous in its length and graceful in its rhythm, is a feast for ballet lovers is to state the obvious and also to sell Mr. Wiseman’s achievement a bit short. Yes, this is one of the finest dance films ever made, but there’s more to it than that."
“La Danse,” which opens at Film Forum in Manhattan on Nov. 4, is Mr. Wiseman’s second ballet documentary; he observed the American Ballet Theater in rehearsal and on tour for “Ballet” (1995). But he cautioned against thinking of the new movie as a sequel."
"The company sets out to rouse spectators through a program of nonstop visual astonishment, and the biggest affront wouldn’t be boos but the reverential silence of a ballet recital."
New York City Ballet, the Joyce Theater Foundation and the New School are among the 18 cultural organizations that have won the Rockefeller Foundation’s annual New York City Cultural Innovation Fund competition, the foundation said on Wednesday.
Stephen Hanna, the former New York City Ballet dancer who portrays the role of Billy’s older self in that musical, will rejoin the company of City Ballet as a guest artist for its coming 2009-2010 winter season.
"The prognosis for the Oakland Ballet Company looked grim in April when founding Artistic Director Ronn Guidi suddenly resigned (for the second time in a decade). "
"There are a lot of dancers who don't think of themselves as artists, so they come prepared to take dictation. But what I want is to give the dancers straw and have them turn it into gold. I want to give them sentences and have them structure it into poetry."
