I wasn’t one of those dancers with natural, aesthetically pleasing lines as a teenager. After falling in love with ballet at the ripe age of 15, I spent the next several years working intensely to sculpt a body that somehow carried me into several major ballet companies. I still hold a certain amount of pride […]
In a spacious upstairs room in his San Francisco home, ballet teacher Christopher Lam gently holds on to an ironing board as he pliés, tendus and dégagés in his socks on the wood floor. He is leading students in a virtual ballet class on Zoom in light of the San Francisco Bay Area’s shelter-in-place order […]
Q: How can I help parents understand that time spent in technique class is as valuable as learning choreography for competitions? A: Parents love to see their children onstage almost as much as students love to perform. That being said, no amount of flashy choreography is going to sustain the long-term development of a young […]
“Fifth! Fifth!” Daniel Catanach shouts during a brisk tendu exercise in his advanced-intermediate ballet class at Steps on Broadway. “That’s ‘fifth’ with a ‘th’!” he adds, making several students’ tense faces relax into smiles. Watching Catanach in action, two things are clear: He’s all about precision, and he wants dancers to enjoy his class. He’s […]
Vicky Shick’s voice echoes in the cavernous dance space of St. Mark’s Church in New York City’s East Village. A sinking plié gets a heavy “uhhhhh,” while a swing-and-recover movement is accompanied by a joyous “whoo!” It doesn’t take long for the students to join in with deep sighs and sharp yelps of their own. […]
While leading a rehearsal of Balanchine’s Serenade, Stacey Calvert can’t help but join in, marking at the front of the studio with a grin on her face. It’s a Friday morning at the University of South Carolina—where Calvert taught and staged works for 17 years—and the dancers are preparing for the annual spring performance, Ballet […]
On a sunny Thursday morning in Berkeley, California, Robin Nasatir leads her modern class through a classic seated floor warm-up full of luscious curves and tilts to the soothing grooves of Bobby McFerrin. Though her modern style is rooted in traditional José Limón and Erick Hawkins techniques, the makeup of her class is far from […]
“Dancers can do everything these days,” I announced to whoever was in earshot at the Jacob’s Pillow Archives during a recent summer. I had just been dazzled by footage of a ballet dancer performing hip hop, remarkably well. But my very next thought was, What if that isn’t always a good thing? What if what […]
It’s nearing 5 pm on a Sunday in February, and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” reverberates through University of South Carolina’s volleyball gym, where the Carolina Girls dance team is rehearsing a Nationals routine. What’s most striking isn’t the dancers’ radiating energy or the team’s precise unanimity. Instead, it’s the complexity of the choreography—the weaving formations, transitions, […]
To a certain subset of the New York City dance community, Gail Accardi is known as the Body Whisperer. For her part, Accardi calls her work “creative physical problem solving.” Whether she’s leading her Anatomy Awareness class for dancers, substitute-teaching Simonson Technique, or working with a private client one-on-one, Accardi has a clear vision: “I […]