American Ballet Theater – Dancing Around

July 1, 2015

Misty Copeland and Stella Abrera promoted at ABT

American Ballet Theatre has announced a raft of promotions, all of them welcome. As the press release says:

“Stella Abrera and Misty Copeland have been promoted to the rank of Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre and Skylar Brandt, Thomas Forster, Arron Scott and Cassandra Trenary have been promoted to Soloist effective August 1, 2015. In addition, Maria Kochetkova, a principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet and Alban Lendorf, a principal dancer with Royal Danish Ballet will join the Company as Principal Dancers and Jeffrey Cirio, a principal dancer with Boston Ballet, will join ABT as a Soloist, it was announced today by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie.

Meanwhile, The Guardian asked me to comment on Misty Copeland’s promotion and its meaning for ballet in the US. You can find the piece here.

October 28, 2013

ABT Brings Back Twyla’s “Bach Partita”

American Ballet Theatre is bringing back Twyla Tharp’s “Bach Partita,” this week, at Lincoln Center. For this advance piece, I spoke with Susan Jones (the ballet mistress who is doing the staging), a couple of dancers, and Charles Yang (the violinist) about the revival of what Arlene Croce described as an “enormous, whirling, weightless ballet”