Welcome back to Standard Time! I, for one, am happy to let DST go and return to clockwork that supports our biological rhythms. If anyone knows of a petition I can sign in support of the eradication of daylight savings time, please let me know.
My latest article for Pointe magazine went live this past week. "Trendy Variations: Should You Base Your Competition Selections According To What's Popular?" addresses the relatively recent phenomenon of the 'viral' competition solo. Since the advent of ballet competitions' being live streamed and archived forever online, the solos that each year's winners perform are inevitably everyone else's choice in subsequent years. The thinking seems to be that certain variations are favored by judges, or that any other dancer can make the winning solo look just as good.
Obviously, that rationale has lots of holes.
I interviewed four prominent ballet world figures for this piece: the founders and directors of two major comps, Youth America Grand Prix and the World Ballet Competition, as well as two dancers (both now with American Ballet Theatre) who competed as teenagers and have also been judges. Larissa Saveliev of YAGP had some quite witty and very pointed, astute observations on the trendy variation issue, and Skylar Brandt, an ABT principal who first competed as a 10-year-old, gave me an awesome quote that really sums it all up.
Here's a link to Pointe+, where you can read the whole piece (it's not long!), and I've given you some of the juicy bits here as well.
My recent Dance Magazine piece on choreographing literature is also now available online, and also linked below.
|