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      From Here to Eternity, a Choreographer Sinks Into the Sea

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      Faye Driscoll uses the ocean as her collaborator in a sunset dance celebrating the 10th anniversary of Beach Sessions.Faye Driscoll has been spending a lot of time at the ocean, in the ocean, with the ocean — watching it as it stretches into the horizon. What if, she wondered, instead of poisoning and polluting the ocean, we were able crawl inside it? To merge the water in our bodies with the water of the sea?For this summer’s iteration of Beach Sessions, a performance series at Rockaway Beach now in its 10th year, Driscoll was drawn, at first, to the choreography of beachgoers — swimming, lying on the sand, lugging their gear. She was also drawn to the lifeguards, decked out in bright orange. But then her gaze shifted.“What I really sunk into was the sea,” she said in a video interview from Rockaway, where she has lived this summer. “Just daily staring: looking at this vast horizon, this great mystery and feeling the sand and the wind.”“Oceanic Feeling” will be performed at Beach 106 at 6:30 p.m. to make use of the phases of twilight.On morning walks, though, she couldn’t ignore the plastic. “I think climate crisis is on all of our minds,” she said. “It’s not like I came here thinking, I’m going to make a piece addressing that” — and she hasn’t — “but I started thinking, what would it mean to put my body on the altar toward the ocean?”Driscoll, an experimental choreographer, has built a body of work embracing a primal, sensorial side of dance; in last year’s “Weathering,” dancers performed on a rotating platform, like a raft, on which they fought to survive, eventually morphing into a sculpture of flesh. In “Oceanic Feeling,” to be performed Saturday at Beach 106 at Rockaway beginning at 6:30 p.m., the dancers, succumbing to the elements — sand, water, wind — melt into one another.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bennington to Revive Dance Program of Philadelphia Arts School

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      Bennington College raised nearly $1.3 million to absorb the dance program of the University of the Arts, which shuttered suddenly in June.Two months after the University of the Arts in Philadelphia closed, the school’s dance program will be revived at Bennington College in Vermont, which will absorb the dance school, three staff members and nearly 50 students, the college announced on Thursday.“What they are doing is the future of dance,” said Laura Walker, the president of Bennington College, who helped raise nearly $1.3 million from philanthropists to make it happen. The money included a donation of $1 million from Barbara and Sebastian Scripps, who run a nonprofit focused on arts education.“It’s a tough time, and we hope this will be a model for others,” Walker said.Nearly 1,150 students and 700 employees were left adrift after the University of the Arts president, Kerry Walk, abruptly closed the school in June, citing financial woes, and then resigned. Soon after, Pennsylvania officials opened an inquiry into the unexpected collapse. Some faculty and students have joined class-action lawsuits accusing the school of fraud and breach of contract; a union representing workers also filed an unfair labor practices complaint against the university in July.Several universities have offered spots to incoming freshmen who had committed to the University of the Arts. Temple University in Philadelphia has also welcomed returning fine arts and drama students, some of whom were near graduation.But the agreement with Bennington College goes further: All incoming and returning students were invited to attend. Donna Faye Burchfield, the former dean of the University of the Arts School of Dance, will oversee the bachelor and masters of fine arts programs, with about 50 students. The program will also include a number of visiting dance artists who previously taught in Philadelphia.“On a Friday evening, we learned about the school closing,” Burchfield said. “On Saturday morning, I started making calls.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dance Leads the Way as Art Meets Sport at the Cultural Olympiad

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      A program of arts events shown in conjunction with the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games looks at the relationship between art and sport.In dance and in sports, there is a common ritual: warming up. As much an art as an activity, it energizes not just the body, but also the mind, speaking less to effort than to surrender. What does it take to get into the zone, that place where the body and mind show up as equals?Since 2022 France has been warming up — on a grand scale. Culture, along with sport and education, is a pillar of Olympism, and France has taken that seriously with its Cultural Olympiad, a program of multidisciplinary arts events directed by Dominique Hervieu, a choreographer, an experienced leader in the arts and a former dancer as well.The thread running through this Olympiad is the connection between sports and art. When do they find symbiosis? When do they diverge? As Hervieu sees it, what binds the Olympic Games is culture, and there, the dance values she embraces play a role: “It’s a way to think with your body,” she said in an interview in Paris. “To think about society, to think about individuality, to think about space.”In other words, to be aware of yourself in the larger world. The contemporary mandate for including a cultural component with the Games began in 1992 in Barcelona, Hervieu said. But how to integrate it is a choice made by the host city, and Hervieu decided on the sports-art connection.Dominique Hervieu is the director of the Cultural Olympiad, a vast program of arts events that began in 2022. “We have 2,500 projects, and it’s incredible,” she said. “It could have been only 500. And everybody would be happy with 500. Me too!”Benjamin BoccasThere are obvious similarities between the two — the idea of excellence and surpassing oneself — but Hervieu also wanted to “show that art is not sport and vice versa,” she said. “The dimension of physical performance, which is the goal of sport with a view to winning, is not the goal of art. This difference is fundamental, because virtuosity in art is always a means of creating a space for meaning or poetry.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Scandal Hits U.K.’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing,’ the Original ‘Dancing With the Stars’

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      The BBC said it would add chaperones to rehearsals after allegations of abusive behavior at a hugely popular dance show that inspired international versions.For almost two decades, viewers in Britain have watched celebrities jive, waltz and cha-cha-cha on “Strictly Come Dancing,” a BBC reality television show that inspired the international “Dancing With the Stars” franchise.The format, which has been licensed to 61 other territories including the U.S., pairs professional ballroom dancers with people who are famous in other fields, from athletics and acting to politics and journalism. The amateur dancers then train intensively with their professional partners and compete in weekly live performances.Introduced in 2004, the show quickly became one of the BBC’s most popular programs, widely loved as a glitzy, family-friendly watch on weekends.But in recent months it has grabbed headlines because of a growing scandal: allegations that two professional male dancers exhibited bullying or abusive behavior toward their female dance partners during rehearsals.One former contestant, the actor Amanda Abbington, has alleged in interviews with the British media that her dance partner, Giovanni Pernice, displayed “bullying” and “aggressive behavior” and was “abusive, cruel and mean.” She declined to give further details of the behavior in interviews, saying the ongoing nature of a BBC investigation into the allegations prevented her from doing so.Ms. Abbington, who appeared in the British series “Sherlock,” cited “personal reasons” last year for leaving the dance competition during filming, but said this week that she had flagged the behavior to producers before filing an official complaint with the BBC. She said she believed that there were 50 hours of rehearsal video that could bolster her case, though they have not been made public.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A New Principal Takes Her Bow at American Ballet Theater

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      After a tremendous “Swan Lake” performance, Chloe Misseldine was promoted onstage at the Metropolitan Opera House. The audience went nuts.It was an extraordinary performance from Chloe Misseldine on Wednesday afternoon, the kind of debut that reminds us how rare it is for a dancer to have not only access to strength and delicacy, but also the ability to weave them together in real time.The moment Susan Jaffe, artistic director of American Ballet Theater, stepped onto the stage after the matinee of “Swan Lake” at the Metropolitan Opera House, it was apparent what was about to happen.“So, Chloe Misseldine doesn’t know this yet,” she said. “But as of this moment, she’s just been promoted to principal dancer.”A roar followed. This isn’t the usual way dancers are told about their promotions at Ballet Theater. Jaffe, in a statement, said that she expected she would name Misseldine a principal at the end of the season, but changed her mind after Misseldine’s New York debut in the dual role of Odette-Odile. “I felt no need to wait,” Jaffe said. “The moment was right.”More than that, the moment was necessary. Both the performance and surprise promotion gave a needed jolt to Ballet Theater’s summer season, a sleepy one so far that has included the company premiere of Wayne McGregor’s ponderous three-act “Woolf Works,” and more traditional repertoire: “Onegin” (with its melodrama and big lift energy) and “Swan Lake” (from 2000 and in need of an overhaul).In “Swan Lake,” Misseldine, dancing with an impressive Aran Bell as Prince Siegfried, showered the stage with glittering dancing, first as Odette — a princess who has been turned into a swan by the evil sorcerer, von Rothbart — and then as Odile, his deceptive daughter who tricks Siegfried at the ball.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mikhail Baryshnikov on Leaving Everything Behind

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      Fifty years ago, Baryshnikov defected from the Soviet Union. He discusses that day, the war in Ukraine and the challenges facing Russian artists today.On the night of June 29, 1974, after a performance with a touring Bolshoi Ballet troupe in downtown Toronto, Mikhail Baryshnikov made his way out a stage door, past a throng of fans and began to run.Baryshnikov, then 26 and already one of ballet’s brightest stars, had made the momentous decision to defect from the Soviet Union and build a career in the West. On that rainy night, he had to evade K.G.B. agents — and audience members seeking autographs — as he rushed to meet a group of Canadian and American friends waiting in a car a few blocks away.“That car took me to the free world,” Baryshnikov, 76, recalled in a recent interview. “It was the start of a new life.”His cloak-and-dagger escape helped to make him a cultural celebrity. “Soviet Dancer in Canada Defects on Bolshoi Tour,” The New York Times declared on its front page.But the focus on his decision to leave the Soviet Union has sometimes made Baryshnikov uneasy. He said he does not like how the term “defector” sounds in English, conjuring an image of a traitor who has committed high treason.“I’m not a defector — I’m a selector,” he said. “That was my choice. I selected this life.”Baryshnikov was born in the Soviet city of Riga, now part of Latvia, and moved to Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in 1964, when he was 16, to study with the renowned teacher Alexander Pushkin. When he was 19, he joined the Kirov Ballet, now known as the Mariinsky, and quickly became a star on the Russian ballet scene.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At the Royal Ballet, Taking the Measure of Ashton’s Genius

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      Many remarkable performances fueled the Royal’s mini-festival of ballets by Frederick Ashton, the company’s founding choreographer.Dance, people like to say, is a universal language. But ballet isn’t. Rather, it’s a language with many sharply contrasting dialects. Tradition, training and temperament all shape distinctive styles, and the English style of classical dance, embodied by the Royal Ballet, was largely shaped by Frederick Ashton (1904-1988), the company’s founding choreographer.Ashton’s work is still regularly performed at the Royal Ballet and vital to its identity. British critics may grumble both about which ballets are performed and about a loss of nuance in their execution. But it would be hard to grouse much during the past two weeks of Ashton Celebrated, a mini-festival of work, running through Saturday at the Royal Opera House, which put the choreographer’s genius — and the English classical dance style — on abundant display in often remarkable performances. (Ashton Celebrated also included performances by the Sarasota Ballet of small-scale Ashton rarities at the smaller Linbury Theater.)Like his contemporary George Balanchine, who shaped a very different aesthetic at New York City Ballet, Ashton developed his Neo-Classicism from the 19th-century heritage of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, the choreographers of “Swan Lake,” among other things. But unlike Balanchine’s pared-back, direct physicality, Ashton cultivated a pliant lyricism paired with intricate footwork and a complex use of épaulement — the contrasting angles of the head, shoulders and hips. Well-mannered and witty, the best of his ballets are also full of emotional subtlety and vitality.Monica Mason, a former director of the Royal Ballet, said one of the principal challenges of performing Ashton now is capturing the flavor of the work. “Fred wanted expression through your whole movement, how you offer your hand, how he puts his arm around your waist,” she said. “The tiny, subtle things are the challenge.”Those nuances were wonderfully evident in “Les Rendezvous,” Ashton’s first substantial classical piece, created in 1933 and back after a 19-year absence from the Royal’s repertory.Set to irresistibly melodic music from Auber’s opera “L’Enfant Prodigue,” the ballet, which opened the first program, evokes a bygone world of long-elbowed gloves, cream teas and chivalrous escorts. It’s a rush of heady delight, full of unobtrusive virtuosity and filigree nuance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With the Help of Whales, a Choreographer Falls Into an Abyss

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      Whales, Black bodies, the ocean, climate change, protest movements — over the past few years, they have all made their way into work by Mayfield Brooks, a choreographer, dancer and vocalist.The latest setting for Brooks’s ever-evolving dance project is a majestic one: the Tall Ship Wavertree, the last iron-hulled, three-masted cargo ship in the world. Built in 1885 and docked at Pier 16, the Wavertree extends about the length of a football field.This week, as part of the River to River Festival, Brooks (who uses they/them pronouns) finishes their whale journey with two works: “Whale Fall Abyss,” a dance performance on the ship, which is part of the South Street Seaport Museum; and “Whale Fall Reckoning,” a companion installation at a gallery — a former munitions room storage space — on Governors Island.In “Abyss,” Brooks, wearing white, performs a compass dance — named for its circular choreography — on one end of the ship while Camilo Restrepo, in a long, swirling mint skirt that trails to the deck, is poised on a high platform, his torso undulating in what Brooks calls a spine dance. Under an American flag rippling in the breeze, Restrepo looks a little like the Statue of Liberty. Eventually Brooks, now in the same skirt, makes their way to him and they conjoin for an extended spine duet. Slowly they mesh into each other, one cradling the other in grief. It’s like their bodies are melting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More