Dance Direct Blog

Ballet has taken a new leap into technology, with students from 18 international schools having performed together virtually at a conference in Toronto. The students from Toronto were linked through dance and livestream with dancers in Amsterdam as part of a curriculum Canada’s National Ballet School has worked into the Assemblée Internationale, a week-long conference [...]

It has been announced that English National Ballet will take part in three Gala performances in the grounds of Buckingham Palace as part of the Coronation Festival in July this year, performing Tempus, a specially commissioned piece paying tribute to Her Majesty The Queen to celebrate the 60th anniversary of her Coronation. Tempus, choreographed by Associate [...]

Alina Cojocaru, back in 2008, launched the fundraising for the Bucharest Hospice Appeal through her first gala for Hospice of Hope, a Romanian charity operating to prevent the abandonment of sick children. This donation of so much of her time and effort is in an entirely different vein from her Royal Ballet status. Now for [...]

Beginning as a soloist under Dame Ninette de Valois in the original Sadler’s Wells Ballet, going on to become a star dancer at the London Palladium, acting opposite Errol Flynn in films and dancing on television, it seems Gillian Lynne has done the lot! Gillian’s career took off when she danced the role of the [...]

ZooNation, the hip hop dance company founded by Kate Prince in 2002, will perform the world premiere of new production Groove on Down the Road at the Southbank Centre in London this summer. The new show is written and directed by Prince, and has been commissioned by the Southbank Centre, described as a “unique twist” [...]

The 25th anniversary of Matthew Bourne’s company New Adventures was 2012, and was perhaps one of the busiest in the company’s history. With the continued success of Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty in 2013, it seems there is no stopping the contemporary, theatrical company. New Adventures recently announced that Sleeping Beauty will tour the United States from [...]

New York City Ballet company, founded in 1948, has announced its 2013-14 season, and it is set to be incredibly exciting for eager ballet and dance fans of all genres. The new season is set to include the world premieres of ballets by Peter Martins, Justin Peck, Angelin Preljocaj and Liam Scarlett, a good result [...]

The Russian superstar, and incredibly versatile, ballerina Natalia Osipova, most recently seen in the Mikhailovsky Ballet’s stint in London, is to join the Royal Ballet Company. Previously dancing with the Bolshoi Ballet, Osipova went on to leave the company two years later for the Mikhailovsky, in which she became a balletic household name. Her 2006 [...]

Maria Tallchief, the muse of celebrated choreographer George Balanchine and fantastic ballerina died on April 11th 2013, aged 88. She became one the most brilliant American ballerinas of the 20th century, and was even one of Balanchine’s wives, securely marking her place in modern ballet history. Tallchief was renowned for her work with Balanchine’s New [...]

Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty, which completed his Tchaikovsky trilogy of the composer’s ballet masterworks, is preparing for a run in New York City in autumn following a hugely successful London season and UK tour. The trio began in 1992 with Nutcracker!, continuing in 1995 with his international hit Swan Lake. Bourne’s acclaimed reimagining of the [...]