Rachel’s blog @ View Rachel @ Juilliard Dance | Published: February 1, 2016 Category: profileBy Rachel Straus Pam Tanowitz is an ideal example of why we opted to call this column, which this month celebrates its seventh consecutive year, “New” Artist of the Month rather than “Young” Artist of the Month. We at MusicalAmerica.com believe in equal opportunity. Let’s hear it for late bloomers with unconventional career paths. […] Published: December 15, 2015 Category: profileBy Rachel Straus This year, flamenco dancer/choreographer Rocío Molina earned the U.K.’s Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance for Bosque Ardora (Ardent Forest), a 2014 work that puts her in a league with pioneering female choreographers Pina Bausch and Martha Graham. In it, Molina takes a scalpel to the socialization of women by exploring […] Published: August 27, 2015 Category: historyBy Rachel Straus It is a rare teacher who develops a loyal following among ballet and modern dancers, but such was the case with Maggie Black (1930-2015) who died at age 85 in May on Long Island. This fiercely independent ballet teacher’s transformative effect on dancers’ abilities was famously dubbed “Black Magic” by none other […] Published: July 29, 2015 Category: profileby Rachel Straus When Loïe Fuller’s Chinese dancers enwound / A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth, / It seemed that a dragon of air / Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round / Or hurried them off on its own furious path— William Butler Yeats Like the American-born dance pioneer Loïe Fuller […] Published: March 1, 2015 Category: history  By Rachel Straus Editor’s Note: Even though Merce Cunningham’s Biped, which is part of this year’s Spring Dances Repertory,was not created with his longtime collaborator John Cage, the work, made seven years after the composer’s death, is very much “in the spirit of their collaboration,” according to dance faculty member Rachel Straus. “It employs the […] Published: December 3, 2014 Category: profileBy Rachel Straus Thanks to Misty Copeland, gone are the days when a company dancer keeps her thoughts to herself and waits for the person in charge (usually a man) to give her the spotlight. The first Black, American Ballet Theatre soloist in more than two decades, Copeland has been increasingly vocal about two things: […] Published: March 4, 2014 Category: profileBy Rachel Straus Takehiro “Take” Ueyama was on the road to professional baseball until his team lost the nationals. Then he discovered Michael Jackson, the Moonwalk, and, much to his dismay, wearing tights. Takehiro “Take” Ueyama fell in love with baseball as a boy growing up in Tokyo, but when his team didn’t make […] Published: March 1, 2014 Category: profileBy Rachel Straus The myth of the artist producing masterworks in isolation is one of many fantasies, and delusions, that haunt the creative process. Actually, works of art occur through the interaction of ideas and impulses. Think Stravinsky and Balanchine and their development of a neoclassical set of aesthetic values. Consider Wagner and Nietzsche and […] Published: August 20, 2013 Category: profilePillowNotes by Rachel Straus The PillowNotes series comprises essays commissioned from our Scholars-in-Residence and others to provide audiences with a broader context for viewing dance. Like the cinematically abrupt scene changes in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, Kyle Abraham’s shifting dance portals in Pavement foster a dreamlike landscape. In his newest work, Abraham employs paradoxical moods […] Published: August 7, 2013 Category: profilePillowNotes by Rachel Straus The PillowNotes series comprises essays commissioned from our Scholars-in-Residence and others to provide audiences with a broader context for viewing dance. When Loie Fuller’s Chinese dancers enwound/A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,/It seemed that a dragon of air/Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round/Or hurried them off on […] |