Tuesday, November 3 Options

[dirac]

Ballet Florida’s old home is sold.

The Ballet Florida building in downtown West Palm Beach will soon house Palm Beach Atlantic University's theater department after a $1.85 million purchase by the small private school.

The 11,950-square-foot facility near CityPlace will include faculty offices, classrooms and performance space.

"The acquisition of this building by PBAU will not only be an asset to the university, but a cultural asset to Palm Beach County and West Palm Beach," said PBAU President Lu Hardin. "My vision is that tourists from New York and Chicago who are visiting CityPlace will attend performances."

Related article.

After years of bleeding money, Ballet Florida filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in July. Its founder, Marie Hale, formed the Dance Florida Academy, which has been housed in the old Ballet Florida building.

The building’s new owner said in a news release it will work with the academy to relocate.

[dirac]

Nominations for the 24th annual Isadora Duncan Awards are announced. Story by Mary Ellen Hunt in The San Francisco Chronicle.

The Izzies also will pay homage to dancer Marc Platt, known as Marc Platoff during his years with the Ballets Russes, for sustained achievement. The Ashkenaz Music and Dance Center in Berkeley and pianist Roy Bogas, whose sensitive playing has enlivened many a San Francisco Ballet performance, will be recognized for their contributions to the Bay Area dance scene.

[dirac]

The dancers of Central West Ballet ask for pay after years of performing without charge. Story by Lisa Millegan in The Modesto Bee.

Founded 22 years ago as a youth organization, Central West Ballet is a resident company at the Gallo Center for the Arts. The group will perform five major shows this season, including "The Nutcracker" in December and "The Sleeping Beauty" in April.

All the other Gallo Center resident companies pay at least some of their artists. The Modesto Symphony Orchestra and the Modesto Community Concert Association pay all of their performers. Townsend Opera Players pays its soloists and the orchestra. The Youth Entertainment Stage Company pays the orchestra, though not its young actors.

[dirac]

Damian Woetzel has been invited to join the President’s Committee on Arts and the Humanities.

First Lady Michelle Obama is the honorary chairman. The 25 panel members from the world of arts and entertainment also include the cellist Yo-yo Ma, the philanthropist Teresa Heinz, Thom Moore, the architect and Damian Woetzel, a ballet dancer.

[dirac]

The conductor Karla Lemon is dead at 55.

In the Bay Area, Lemon conducted for Composers Inc., Earplay, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Rohnert Park Symphony, the Women's Philharmonic, UC-Davis, Santa Rosa Symphony and San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, among others. Last February she led the Composers Inc. premiere of Allen Shearer's opera The Dawn Makers, which featured Brandes. In 2005, Lemon and Brandes performed together in the Lincoln Center premiere of "Four Settings," by composer Melinda Wagner.

"She was a superb conductor, extraordinary musician and a truly wonderful human being," JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, wrote about Lemon in an online condolence book hosted by San Francisco Classical Voice. "Her beautiful spirit and talent will be greatly missed."

[dirac]

A preview of a new movie from the UK called StreetDance, with trailer.

After a group of urban dancers find themselves without rehearsal space in the run-up to a top competition, they are forced to work with Royal Ballet dancers in exchange for studio time.

[dirac]

George Zoritch has died. Obituary by Matt Lewis in The Arizona Daily Star.

George Zoritch, an international ballet star and former University of Arizona professor, passed away Sunday in Tucson. He was in his early 90s. Zoritch was well-known as many things during his life, including a famous ballet dancer here and in Europe, a teacher, a Hollywood actor and a Broadway dancer.

Zoritch, born in Moscow in 1917, was a student of the legendary Russian ballerina Olga Preobrajenska.

[dirac]

Reviews of "La Danse: the Paris Opera Ballet."

The Village Voice (note that the revival of The Red Shoes is also reviewed).

Roughly two-thirds of La Danse is devoted to rehearsal and performance, shot in deeply satisfying long takes of gorgeous young men and women starting, stopping, listening, questioning, repeating, perfecting. The rest is behind the scenes, and as Wiseman shows empty corridors, the many types of grains available in the cafeteria of the Palais Garnier, sewing rooms, and the nightly clean-up of the 2,200-seat theater, the stealth star of La Danse emerges: Brigitte (Lefèvre), the company's tremendously composed, elegant artistic director. Shown in a meeting discussing the finer distinctions between "benefactors" and "big benefactors," as the company prepares to welcome a contingent of "American friends" (including a lunch with . . . Lehman Brothers), Lefèvre nimbly tackles the potential messiness—but absolute necessity—of crass commerce fueling high art. When not administrating, Lefèvre seems happiest as a maternal martinet, reminding one new student, "To do is the most important."

Film Journal International

In some ways, La Danse is a return to Ballet (1995), Wiseman's documentary about the American Ballet Theatre: We witness leonine artistic directors—in this case, Brigitte Lefèvre—struggling to ensure their institution's financial security, and preserve the delicate hierarchy of stars and starlets that comprise the heart of any ballet company. Like Ballet, La Danse is also a beautiful investigation of craft. We watch as the dancers first master a phrase, and then a sequence and, finally, perform parts of "Medea," "Paquita" and other ballets in dress rehearsal. Wiseman also wanders the strangely silent halls of the Palais Garnier, sometimes aiming his camera at a plasterer, but often simply charting the real and metaphorical conduits that are the heart and lungs of the place. In one sequence, we drift to the roof, where Wiseman alights on an unexpected sight that would stretch credulity in any narrative film.

[dirac]

A review of the DVD of Natasha by Dane Youssef for movieweb.com.

The film chronicles on her brief partnership with Royal Ballet Brit extraordinaire Anthony Dowell, who did as much Britain's ballet as Dame Margot Fonteyn did. They even dance the legendary "Romeo & Juliet" together that was tailored for Nureyev and Fonteyn. They dance divinely, with Dowell being less graceful and more strong and prominent than those in the role before him, including Nureyev himself. Dowell expresses the kind of strength, stature and passion we'd expect from a classical leading man. The ideal partner every girl in ballet class fixates herself on. A true "ballerino."

As great as her partners are, they're pretty much just assistants. They can barely hold their own around Natasha. The ballerinas are usually the stars in this craft. They've dominated it and owned it even more than the Russians have. But Natasha is so damn breathtaking, so light, so with the music... she almost makes the men around her unnessicary. Only Dennis Ganio seems to really come close to matching that kind of majesty Natasha herself has. The two often seem like they're about to float away.

[Helene]

Lisa Rinehart reviews Morphoses in "Continuum," "Softly as I Leave You," and "Rhapsody Fantaisie" at City Center for danceviewtimes.

Christopher Wheeldon's three-year-old company, Morphoses, is a collision of big ambitions and questionable choices. Luxe visuals, live music and top-notch dancers -- most borrowed from other companies -- make the troupe interchangeable with many world-class ensembles. But pre-show chats in front of the curtain (nice touch, but not revolutionary) and filmed pop-ups before each ballet are unnecessary annoyances. This season, footage from the company's residency on Martha's Vineyard feels like an appeal for the "Save the Dancers Fund." And fundraising aside, Wheeldon doesn't need the outreach efforts. The Morphoses audience is already pretty well informed. They want what most ballet audiences want -- an evening of beautiful bodies doing beautiful things that are sometimes quite profound. And on this point anyway, Wheeldon's Program B delivers.