There’s so much history in the ballet world! Some of the dances that are being performed today date back to a century ago, and you wouldn’t know it if you didn’t study it. It’s important to know the origin of the companies and choreography we’ve come to know and love. The following are nine legendary […]
Tonight CBS broadcasts the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors—and one of the honorees is a true ballet legend. There are many incredible ballerinas dancing today, but nobody can ever quite measure up to Natalia Makarova. She first rose to fame at the Kirov Ballet in the 1960s, but after she defected from the USSR in 1970, […]
It seems like the ballet world always has one or two James Dean-y bad boys, super-talented men who buck convention—not always the easiest thing to do in ballet—and do things their own way. Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Carlos Acosta, Rasta Thomas (who founded, fittingly, the Bad Boys of Dance): They’re all amazing performers who, thanks […]
Hey there, lucky San Francisco dance fans: There’s a pretty amazing exhibition happening at the de Young Museum right now, “Rudolf Nureyev: A Life in Dance.” If features a display of 80 costumes that the dance legend and his co-stars wore—which is especially fitting because Nureyev was famously involved in creating the costumes for his […]
Most people celebrate Valentine’s Day with candy hearts and teddy bears and red roses. But much as I’m a total sap for all of that stuff, my favorite VDay tradition is watching this clip of Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca in the balcony pas de deux from Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet. (It’s from the […]