I love when the classic newspaper dance critics describe hip-hop.  They’re called “dance critics” but that really means “mainly a ballet critic” because ballets are frequent, funded, old, organized, and scheduled in advance.  They play well with newspapers.
It’s more difficult to pin down hip-hop.  Where does it happen?  Who is the teacher and who is [...]

I used to volunteer at the Washington Ballet School.  From my little office on K street, I’d hop on the red line, make a requisite stop at Whole Foods, then arrive at the school where loads of kids would be starting classes, ending classes and stretching in the middle of the hallways.  There was no [...]

“If you can’t find any potions for sore muscles at your local pharmacy it’s probably because the dancers of the National Ballet of Canada got there first.”
From Michael Crabb’s review of Innovations, appropriately titled “Bent Into Shape.”

Before every performance at the Four Seasons Center, the National Ballet of Canada hosts a short lecture on the ballet about to be shown.  Sometimes the speaker is a historian, sometimes a costume designer or, if you’re lucky, a dancer from the company.   The idea is brilliant.  At once, new comers are put at [...]

This past week marked the end of my first month, back to ballet classes.  Along the way, I made notes of some lessons and challenges that became clear.  Naturally, I’ve also jotted some of Bob’s reality-check truisms.
January/February:

The closer your arms are to your body, the easier - but uglier - the full turn.  Arms must [...]

In 2001, the Washington Post ran an article on amateur ballet.  I bookmarked it years ago and still find this analogy so funny and accurate:
“The common denominator,” writes critic Robert Greskovic in his encyclopedic and entertaining guidebook “Ballet 101,” “is perfection of participant and of execution.” Which may be why, he notes, for New York [...]