Introducing Diablo Ballet’s New Resident Choreographer: Robert Dekkers
By Diane Claytor I still remember when my (now adult) daughter and her pre-teen friends would “choreograph” dances in our family room. All their moves mimicked the words in whatever tune they were dancing to; a song that included a reference to a roller coaster had the girls bending up and down; they were “climbing […]
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Ballet Competitions: How Do They Score?
By Liesl Ferreira It’s not a surprise that in this highly competitive era, competitions have also made their way into the ballet world. Still, I only recently became aware of their existence, and was quite frankly, shocked. What is left in this society, I thought, that has escaped the curse of being scored? What will […]
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America’s National Ballet Company
By Diane Claytor What do Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalie Makarova, Ethan Stiefel, Gelsey Kirkland, Vladimir Mallakhov and Carla Fracci all have in common (ok — besides the fact that they are well known incredible ballet dancers)? Each of them was a principal dancer with the world famous American Ballet Theatre (ABT). Considered by many to be […]
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A Day in the Life of a Ballet Dancer
By Diane Claytor Deborah Bull, a former dancer with the Royal Ballet and currently the director of Cultural Institute at King’s College in London, wrote in her book, “The Everyday Dancer”, that the day of a professional ballet dancer is more or less 12 hours of working, 6 days a week. According to Edward Stegge, […]
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Grand Allegro: The Bigger Picture
An Interview with Diablo Ballet’s Derek Sakakura On The Jumps That Make Us Go Wow By Liesl Ferreira There is a big debate about whether dancers are athletes or not. I say that watching them do a series of jumps across a stage will immediately put that argument to rest. When I showed my husband, […]
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