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Posts Tagged ‘ballet’

Boys Taking Ballet

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 23, 2013| 3 Comments »

Photo: Diana Martin, Chatham Daily News
Benjamin Alexander studies at Canada’s National Ballet School

I loved the movie Billy Elliott, about an English boy who is drawn to the fun and beauty of ballet after his mother’s death casts a deep pall over the family. His macho dad and brother, coal miners toughing out a bitter strike during the austere Thatcher years, are appalled and even hostile. But it’s hardly a spoiler to say that art wins the day.

Recently I read an article about contemporary Billy Elliots and was intrigued. They all seemed very matter-of-fact about their interest.

Isabel Teotonio in the Toronto Star writes, “This year, Canada’s National Ballet School (NBS) has the highest percentage of boys in its entry-level Grade 6 class in its history: 65 per cent. …

“The phenomenon isn’t confined to NBS. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, dance was the 10th most popular ‘sport’ for boys aged 5 to 14 in 2012, with participation rates rising in recent years.

“And in the United Kingdom, an August survey of 1,000 children aged 2 to 12, done by retailer Mothercare and charity Save the Children, found more boys (8 per cent) than girls (5 per cent) wanted to become a dancer. In order of preference, the top jobs for boys were doctor, soccer player, dancer and teacher. For girls: doctor, teacher, soccer player and dancer.” More.

As I was poking around the web for more, I found this WordPress blog listing programs for boys. The blogger led me in turn to a nice story by Ellwood Shreve in the Chatham Daily News, here, about an enthusiastic NBS student, above.

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Dance for Grandma

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 19, 2013| Leave a Comment »

In the UK, retirees are taking up ballet.

Emma Ailes writes for BBC Scotland, “In a locker room at Scottish Ballet, a group of dancers are lacing up their ballet shoes. Only one thing marks them out from the other dancers here. These dancers are all in their 60s and 70s.

“Today, they are rehearsing ‘Swan Lake.’

“Among them is Alicia Steele. She danced when she was young. Now, nearly 80, she’s back.

” ‘I went to keep-fit classes, but I found them a bit boring,’ she says. ‘And I love the music with the piano. I just love it and it makes you feel a bit young again. It doesn’t make you look young, but it makes you feel young inside.’

“There’s been a 70% jump in the number of adult dancers signing up for classes in recent years, according to the Royal Academy of Dance. Some, like Alicia, danced when they were young. Others are complete beginners.

“Their oldest ballerina is 102.” More.

I took ballet both as a child and as an adult. But for now, I am sticking with tai chi chuan. Today the teacher had me learning complicated new moves with the advanced students. “You deserve it,” he said to me.

I’m not sure how to take that.

Photo: BBC Scotland

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Collage and Editing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Sunday evening I went over to Concord Academy to hear Seán Curran talk about how he creates choreography. Betsy, one of the dancers from his company, did a beautiful job of demonstrating what he meant.

As a little boy growing up in Watertown, Seán said, he waited eagerly for the mail that brought Look magazine. He liked to cut out pictures and make collages with them.

He says that his approach to choreography is similar. He arranges many snippets or dance phrases in different ways. His challenge is to edit down the many ideas so that the choreography doesn’t topple from too much weight.

I make collages, too. I have always liked the idea of taking a bunch of random things people have said and trying to make a play out of them, for example.

I also make collage greeting cards. I keep a box of promising pictures, cut from magazines and gallery postcards. I go through the whole pile and set aside maybe 20 items that somehow remind me of the person for whom I am making the card. Then I edit them down to the few pieces that will be best for the particular occasion.

All that happens before I cut the shapes and decide on how to arrange them. Sometimes I do a cutout of a cutout and put something else in the space: for example, I cut a vista out of a painting of a window and put a girl in the space (bottom right).

Here are examples.

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Ballet as a Way Out

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Pamela Boykoff at CNN has a nice story about a ballet school in the Philippines and the hope it offers children from very poor families.

“Jessa Balote is 14-years-old and training to be a professional ballerina in Manila,” writes Boykoff.

“It is a task that takes enormous amounts of dedication for even the most determined of young women, but Balote’s challenge is nothing compared to life outside the dance studio where she has to support her entire family.

” ‘I’m the only one they expect to bring the family out of poverty,’ she says.

“Balote is one of 54 students enrolled in ‘Project Ballet Futures,’ a program run by Ballet Manila to provide free ballet training to children from some of the city’s most deprived neighborhoods.

“Balote lives in Tondo, a slum built next to a major waste dump in Manila. Her parents make what little money they have by selling trash. If Balote was not involved in the dance program, she says she wouldn’t be able to eat everyday.

” ‘They want to earn money to be able to survive,’ says Lisa Macuja-Elizalde, founder of the program and the Philippines’ first prima ballerina. She believes in her students, personally paying for their lessons and uniforms.

“Macuja-Elizalde’s goal is to help these children become professional members of the company with incomes to match. They are among her most focused students, she says, not afraid to work hard and to push themselves and their bodies.”

Read more.

Photograph: CNN

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Soweto Boy Overturns Ballet Stereotypes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Perhaps you saw this CNN story about a sports-loving boy from Soweto and his transformation into ballet dancer.  “Andile Ndlovu is one of South Africa’s most prominent young ballet dancers, an international performer and award winner both at home and overseas. But for Ndlovu to be accepted into the rarefied world of classical dance — which in South Africa is traditionally seen as an elitist and a predominantly white preserve — the boy from the rough Soweto townships says he had to overcome outdated stereotypes.

” ‘I used to be picked upon for the way I walk and the way I act or carry myself,’ he says of his time at school, where he became disparagingly known as ‘the dude who did ballet.’ …

“In late 2008, [his] perseverance was rewarded as he was offered a place at The Washington Ballet, one of the most prestigious dance companies in the United States. That year he shot to fame in a production of Don Quixote by the South Africa Ballet Theater. Now 23, Ndlovu has gone on to win awards at the Boston and Cape Town International Ballet competitions, as well as securing prominent roles in numerous ballet productions across the world. This success, he hopes, will eventually enable him to change conventionally held views not only of black dancers but male ballet dancers in general.

” ‘What I wanted was to change people’s minds in South Africa about black ballet dancers. I wanted to change that view, because everybody used to put it in a category for the elite people or, you know, it’s only for a certain racial group,’ he says.”

In this YouTube video, he describes how his sister was the one who gave him a push into the life he has now fully embraced. Speaking of her makes him smile.

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Leaping Over Obstacles

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I was chatting with a colleague in the washroom today, asking what she was doing this weekend, and she said she was going to New York to cheer for her brother in the marathon. She also mentioned in a proud but modest way that there was an article about him in today’s NY Times. We went and looked for the article, and I realized I had already read it word for word.

What an unusual brother! Kevin Dwyer decided as a child to be a dancer and had a ballet career, all while suffering from cystic fibrosis. The youngest in a family of seven children, he was the fourth to have CF. He didn’t tell people.

Although he and his siblings have a mutation of the disease that means it is not as severe as for many, it takes a real toll. Nevertheless, this weekend Kevin is running a marathon. His aim is to raise money for Team Boomer (started by the retired quarterback Boomer Esiason),  which funds much-needed CF research.

The NY Times writes that Kevin has “chronicled [his marathon training] in a lively blog, Kevin Running. When he goes out this Sunday, he will have lung capacity of 58 to 60 percent.

“ ‘I can beat this, in one little way,’ he said. ‘For at least one day, I can beat it. We’ve trained at 11-minute miles, but I think we will go kind of slow, maybe 11:45 or 12 minutes, so I can take everything in. Take everybody in. Make it a celebration.’ ” Read more.

I highly recommend chatting with colleagues in the washroom. I have learned so much that way!

P.S. Kevin was on the Early Show the next day.

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Did a Ballerina Spark Occupy Wall Street?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

ArtsJournal.com sent me to this article describing a ballerina posed on the Wall Street bull. The article suggests that one of the many tipping points that led to the Occupy movement was this image of a dancer. I like to think that the arts can spark a movement, although I think the Arab Spring played a bigger role in this case.

 

“When Vancouver-based Adbusters presented the idea to the world, it did so in the form of a poster that featured a dancer posed on the shoulders of the Wall Street bull statue, a foggy clamour of demonstrators behind her. The poster asked the question, ‘What is our one demand?’ Activist groups seized on it, as did the hacktivist group Anonymous, and a collective began to form. …

 

“To hear tell from [Vancouver-based] Adbusters founder and editor Kalle Lasn now, the question of that one demand still needs to be answered concisely and directly. But as the movement overspills Wall Street, he describes it as the most successful in the 22 years he and his magazine have been advocating ‘culture jamming.’ ” Read more. The Kalle Lasn interview is at Seattle’s Crosscuts.com  (“news of the the great nearby,” whatever that means).

 

As intrigued as I am that a ballerina poster could have been a tipping point for a movement, I think the question, “What is our one demand?” is even more intriguing. I would like to spin off from that and ask, “What is the one thing you want (in general, not public policies necessarily)?” Could you name the one thing? I think this is different from making a wish and blowing out candles. But maybe not. I will give it some thought myself.

 

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