Please send me more ideas through the comments

The Ailey Spirit Gala will take place on June 11 at 7:30. It will include virtual performances by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, The Ailey School, AileyCamp and other guests. You can register here:

https://www.alvinailey.org/support/ailey-spirit-gala

Dance Theater of Harlem is broadcasting its historic production, Creole Giselle, on its YouTube page. The star of this important staging, in which the action has been moved from the Alps to a community of free blacks in the Louisiana of the 1840’s, is the elegant Virginia Johnson. The idea was Arthur Mitchell’s, and the staging was by Frederick Franklin. The production, which dates from 1984, hasn’t been seen in decades. Wouldn’t it be great if DTH could stage it again?

The choreographer Alonzo King has created the first of five dance videos with dancers from his company LINES, entitled, There is No Standing Still. You can see it here:

Alonzo King: “There is No Standing Still”

The Works & Process series is commissioning short dance videos from a wide spectrum of dancemakers. So far, I’ve been impressed by Jamar Roberts’ Cooped, Dance Heginbotham’s Caprices, and Caleb Teicher’s Thank You Central Park. More are coming online all the time.

Miami City Ballet is kicking off a new series of online offerings, starting with its new Firebird, on May 29 at 8pm. After that, it’s Justin Peck’s Heatscape on June 12, Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs on June 26, and Symphonic Dances on July 10.

https://www.facebook.com/miamicityballet

The Castleton Festival is streaming Derrick Wang’s new opera Scalia / Ginsburg 

https://www.operaballet.nl/en/online/ballet/streaming?fbclid=IwAR3741sWUSDzSNXeroRqHY4mZCX34cQqvec1MJVPBgpi1RIqaOosFFhI8qQ#mata-hari

The Royal Danish Ballet is broadcasting Petipa’s Raymonda and John Neumeier’s Romeo and Juliet.

https://kglteater.dk/xtra/forestillinger

The Metropolitan Opera is offering nightly opera streams.

https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/

The Royal Ballet is streaming Cathy Marston’s The Cellist May 24-Oct. 8

The Merce Cunningham Trust is launching a very exciting online initiative, offering streams of Cunningham dances performed around the world during the Cunningham centennial last year. These include the spine-tingling Sounddance performed by the Ballet de Lorraine (May 4-31), Tread performed by the Stephen Petronio Company (May 18-June 14), Scramble performed by NYTB/Chamber Works (June 22-July 19), Beach Birds performed by CNDC (July 13-August 19) and Summerspace performed by Lyon Opera Ballet (Jul 20-August 16).

https://vimeo.com/showcase/centennial-repertory-festival

St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater  is broadcasting opera and ballet. Coming up: Giselle and Ratmansky’s Little Humpbacked Horse.

The Joyce Theater  has begun transmitting works by companies who have performed there in the past or should be performing there now.  Malpaso Dance, an up-and-coming Cuban company, is currently on tap, and May 25-28 it will feature the Tap Family Reunion. Then after that, the two films by the Danish director Signe Roderik will be shown on May 29-June 1 and June 1-4. The first focuses on the art of balletic mime, a Danish specialty. And the second, When I Dance, is an extremely moving portrait of two students at the Royal Danish Ballet school.

http://joyce.org/engage/joycestream

On June 11-14, Stuttgart Ballet will broadcast John Cranko’s Concerto for Flute and Harp

https://www.instagram.com/thestuttgartballet/

The excellent Perm Opera and Ballet is broadcasting concerts, opera, and ballet, including  Jerome Robbins’ The Seasons and Le Corsaire and La Sylphide.

https://permopera.ru/en/media/mediatec/

Lincoln Center is offering a whole slew of performances, including chamber music, an evening of flamenco with Soledad Barrio, and Copland’s Appalachian spring

http://lincolncenter.org/lincoln-center-at-home/series/dance-week

NYTB, formerly known as New York Theatre Ballet, is streaming works from its repertory, including Merce Cunningham’s Scramble:

https://vimeo.com/332333684/38545f56b4

For more, go to the company’s Vimeo page:

https://vimeo.com/user5961657

Performances from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia are here:

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-29/coronavirus-choir-outbreak?fbclid=IwAR2gcBM2uNo_nWo6-Oxe-jKZSea1YLG9TNqo2Czh0Sgbyd0kDuOLXcwAwGs

More dance, from The Dance Center at Columbia College in Chicago

https://dance.colum.edu/video

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is offering several of its concerts online, including a 1967 concert of excerpts of the Götterdämmerung (more Wagner!) here:

https://www.bso.org/brands/bso/at-home/bso-at-home-week-1-bso-music-directors.aspx

The Teatro La Fenice is broadcasting productions on its YouTube channel. Right now, they have Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso and Rossini’s Semiramide, among other things on there.

https://www.youtube.com/user/TeatroFeniceVenezia

The Teatro Regio in Turin is broadcasting operas on its YouTube channel, including Carmen, Nabucco, and Un Italiana in Algeri

Ballet Flanders is streaming Benjamin Millepied’s Bach Studies (haven’t seen it, can’t vouch for it):

https://www.podiumaanhuis.be/video/bach-studies-benjamin-millepied-2019?fbclid=IwAR084mc15Fl2Eu-U8bp-Y9cdWeQQQDIslrrC3GYOWAs7Oz145AJ9ksTjGcY

The Brazilian dance company Grupo Corpo (wonderful dancers) is streaming its shows

https://vimeo.com/grupocorpo

New York Live Arts is streaming works by Bill T. Jones and others on its YouTube page

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9uREWTI07bDtRu1yxOkR0w

The Teatro Regio di Parma is streaming its Verdi Festival. April 1, Macbeth, with its excellent demonstration of hand-washing.

https://www.teatroregioparma.it/spettacolo/festival-verdi-home-streaming/

The Dutch National Opera and Ballet have set up an online portal on which they are currently streaming Coppelia and a Hans van Manen evening.

https://www.operaballet.nl/online/ballet/streaming

Béjart Ballet Lausanne is streaming Béjart’s Magic Flute and other ballets

https://www.bejart.ch/spectacle/onstream-flute-enchantee/

Teatro Comunale di Bologna is streaming both opera and ballet on its YouTube channel. March 29: Swan Lake:

The Teatro Massimo in Palermo offers opera via this link:

http://www.teatromassimo.it/teatro-massimo-tv-567/

The Teatro San Carlo in Naples offers both opera and ballet through its Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/teatrodisancarlo/

Only available in Europe:

Dance Films

Alla Kovgan’s stunning “Cunningham” film is now available for streaming

https://www.cunninghammovie.com/

Classes:

Ballet Classes with Sam Black of Mark Morris Dance Group

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZyiqA32oSo&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0688ZPa2d67_hFcGZElHP2BlbiByRPfPhfROjnjocEiqpanrDc0-3nRNA

Tiler Peck of New York City Ballet offers a daily class at 1pm EST on Instagram

@TilerPeck

Streaming ballet classes from Ballet Academy East (the studio in NY I normally go to)

http://balletacademyeast.com/adult-division/

Ballet classes with Tamara Rojo of English National Ballet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcT9uRJqCrE

Companies or groups I’m less or not at all familiar with:

Michelle Brangwen Dance Ensemble

https://www.brangwendance.org/artcast

Ratmansky’s “Odessa” is back at NYCB for just a few performances. I wasn’t allowed to review it last season because I’d watched a couple of rehearsals (company policy). So I was glad to revisit the ballet—which caused some controversy—and get to think about it again.

New York City Ballet held a gala evening with premieres of dances by young choreogarphers. I particularly enjoyed Justin Peck’s new “Pulcinella Variations,” his first stab at a real “classical” ballet. My review is here.

I got to watch Julio Bocca and Alessandra as they coached a group of students of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis school in a scene from Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet,” a ballet they danced together countless times. I wrote about it for the New Yorker Culture Blog.

Christine Shevchenko of ABT went from her first lead to principal status in a single season. How does that happen? I tracked the process for Dance Magazine’s Oct. issue. Great pics by Kyle Froman.

Wrote a piece for the Revista Teatro Colon—my first time writing about dance in Spanish!—about what we can learn from ballet reconstructions.

Here’s a link: Revista-129-Julio-Agosto-9-26-28 HARSS

Some things to look forward to (on the dance front) this fall:

In the eight years since Pina Bausch’s sudden death, her company, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, has soldiered on, performing her emotionally strenuous dance-theatre works. At bam (Sept. 14-24), the troupe presents two scorchers, “Café Müller” and “The Rite of Spring,” both made in the seventies, before a hint of gentleness began to creep into Bausch’s world view. The first is set in a chair-strewn room, where nightmarish personal dramas play out to the music of Purcell. The other takes place on a dirt-covered stage, a sombre setting for a hair-raising ritual of immolation.

A redemption of sorts can be found in “A Love Supreme” (New York Live Arts, Sept. 27-30), Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s collaboration with Salva Sanchis, a former member of De Keersmaeker’s company, Rosas. With a mix of choreographed movement and improvisation, Sanchis and De Keersmaeker have conjured a physical counterpart to John Coltrane’s famous 1964 album. It is danced by four men, each of whom closely scans a musical line played by a different member of Coltrane’s legendary quartet.

Alexei Ratmansky’s affinity for the music of the contemporary Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov has produced some of his most original ballets, including “Russian Seasons” and “Old Women Falling Out.” His newest work for American Ballet Theatre (the season runs Oct. 18-29, at the David H. Koch) premières on Oct. 18, with a score by the same composer, “Bukovinian Songs,” a suite for solo piano based on Ukrainian folk tunes. Ratmansky’s other recent Desyatnikov ballet, “Odessa,” will be part of New York City Ballet’s fall season (Sept. 19-Oct. 15, at the David H. Koch).

Ask any dancer her favorite dance film, and she’s likely to name the 1948 surrealist melodrama “The Red Shoes,” about a ballerina (played by Moira Shearer) driven to self-destruction by her love of dance. Who better to adapt this gory tale for the stage than the British choreographer Matthew Bourne, who brought us a danced version of “Edward Scissorhands”? At City Center (Oct. 26-Nov. 5), the role of the aristocratic, tenderhearted, and obsessive heroine will be performed alternately by Ashley Shaw, of Bourne’s London-based company New Adventures, and N.Y.C.B.’s own drama queen Sara Mearns.

An impossible love story drawn from Persian myth lies at the heart of “Layla and Majnun,” a 1908 opera by the Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyli. In Mark Morris’s version (in the White Light Festival, at the Rose Theatre, Oct. 26-29), the singers and players—members of the Silk Road Ensemble—sit in the center of a tiered stage, as, all around them, dancers from the Mark Morris Dance Group reënact the story of the star-crossed lovers.

Last week a memorial for Trisha Brown was held at the Whitney. It was a touching event; there were not many dry eyes in the house. There were funny, and moving speeches by Laurie Anderson, Steve Paxton, Brown’s son, Adam, and others. Five dancers performed Spanish Dance, with tears in their eyes. After it ended, a screen rose, revealing the glow of the setting sun over the Hudson.
I put together some thoughts on the event for the New Yorker.