Ashley David – Page 3

Dance Blog Spotlight: 2PointeSocial

November 15, 2012 by Ashley David

Today I’m excited to introduce Amanda McAlpine, author of ballet and social media blog, 2PointeSocial..

Amanda McAlpine

1. Can you tell readers a bit about your background in dance?

I am originally from New Hampshire, and received the majority of my training from my mentor and artistic director, Doreen Cafarella at Northern Ballet Theatre Dance Centre (formerly Granite State Ballet School). I really credit Ms. Cafarella for pushing me to the next level and encouraging me to participate in Youth America Grand Prix and the ABT summer intensive. While I was training with the school, I also had the honor of dancing Apprentice roles with the professional company in the early 2000s. Upon graduation from high school, I continued to dance at Emerson College in Boston. I came from a ballet-focused background, so I was able to gain more experience in other styles of dance including modern and musical theater (and I even got to sing!) One of the most fun performances in college was performing the Lonely Town pas de deux in the spring musical, “On the Town.”

After gaining a couple of years of professional marketing experience, I moved out to Chicago to explore the dance scene here. There’s a ton of performances to see all the time and it’s a wonderfully supportive dance community. I also began working at The Joffrey Ballet last September shortly after I moved here, so I still take classes at the Joffrey Academy from time to time and try to keep dance in my life as much as possible…which is part of the reason I began my blog. 🙂

2. When did you begin your blog—and why did you start it? [Read more…]

DVD Review: The Bolshoi Ballet’s Giselle

October 29, 2012 by Ashley David

by Emily Kate Long

Filmed in 2011, this Giselle is Yuri Grigorovich’s version after choreography by Coralli, Perrot, and Petipa. Simon Virsaladze’s set and costume designs are gloriously light and airy, and the staging in both acts is full but polished.

Svetlana Lunkina’s Giselle is playful and modest in Act 1. Her sweetness is well complemented by Dimitry Gudanov’s casual confidence as Albrecht. Lunkina is closeup-ready; every expression is genuine and effective down to the ends of her eyelashes. It’s easy to fall in love with her, and easy to mourn her madness and heartbreak. This Giselle’s believably tragic and deeply personal mad scene is, unfortunately, somewhat cheapened by the villagers’ over-the-top reactions of distress at the close of the act.

The Giselle that appears in Act 2 is, appropriately, the emotionally spent young woman whose world collapsed around her in Act 1. Her innocence has been darkened, her joy dampened. Lunkina is completely at the mercy of a cruel and somber Myrtha (Maria Allash) until her true love and forgiveness of Albrecht break Myrtha’s spell and to save him at sunrise. The dancing of the wilis is pure magic—the suspension of one woman from a rocking mechanism to drop lilies on Albrecht is pure distraction.

The huge scale of a Bolshoi production is something that simply doesn’t exist in the West. For most of us, video is the only way we’ll ever see something so enormous. Watching that magnificence, as well as seeing Lunkina close up, is absolutely a treat, but here video simultaneously detracts where it enhances. The humanity of her Giselle, so wonderfully highlighted in close-ups, seems out of context amid the exaggerated grandness traditional on the Bolshoi stage.

The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra in Giselle. 109 minutes. Pathe Live, Bel Aire Media, and the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre, 2012.

Assistant Editor Emily Kate Long began her dance education in South Bend, Indiana, with Kimmary Williams and Jacob Rice, and graduated in 2007 from Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School’s Schenley Program. She has spent summers studying at Ballet Chicago, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Miami City Ballet, and Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive/Vail Valley Dance Intensive, where she served as Program Assistant. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007.

Ms Long has been a member of Ballet Quad Cities since 2009. She has danced featured roles in Deanna Carter’s Ash to Glass and Dracula, participated in the company’s 2010 tour to New York City, and most recently performed principal roles in Courtney Lyon’s Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Cinderella. She is also on the faculty of Ballet Quad Cities School of Dance, where she teaches ballet, pointe, and repertoire classes.

Dracula, Choreography & Artistic Ownership

October 10, 2012 by Ashley David

by Emily Kate Long

ballet quad cities — Ballet Quad Cities dancers Lauren Derrig, Kelsee Green, Margaret Huling, and Emily Kate Long

Last month I had the opportunity to return to the role of Mina Murray-Harker in Deanna Carter’s Dracula. It was the season opener for Ballet Quad Cities when I joined the company in 2009, and my experience then was radically different from now. The process of re-learning got me thinking about the dancer’s function in the existence of a role. To remember and pass on steps is one thing, but what about the aspect of characterization? We must preserve, but we must also advance. Interpretation and personalization are inherent in live art. How can we go about our work in a way respects the choreographer’s wishes?

Mina was the first real character role I ever danced, and Dracula was the first ballet I ever performed as a full member of a professional company. It was the beginning of my awareness of the huge clash between the academic, black-and-white (or, perhaps more appropriately, black-and-pink) framework I clung to as a student and the messy, splatter-colored, pick-your-own-adventure world of a professional career.

My professional performing experience up to that point had consisted largely of being the third-shortest girl in a line of umpteen in hundred-year-old tutu ballets. Conformity was the order of the day, and I quaked in my pointe shoes at the prospect of sticking out—being noticed usually meant you had done something wrong. We had a saying at Milwaukee Ballet among the trainees: “Know your role and shut your hole.” Great for staying out of trouble, not so great for artistic self-discovery.

I had anticipated that professional life would just be an extension of what I already knew: take class and do as I was told, learn choreography and do as I was told, perform choreography and hope I didn’t get reprimanded afterwards. Feedback or not, there was always the nagging question of whether my work had been good enough. Little did I know that being an artist has a lot more to do with being honest and generous and responsible than about being right by arbitrary standards. [Read more…]

Career Transition For Dancers-Maryellen Langhout

October 1, 2012 by Ashley David

Today we are pleased to announce a partnership with Career Transition For Dancers! In the coming months you’ll be hearing more about this wonderful organization as we post a regular feature highlighting the work that they do in their offices across the country.

We begin with an interview with Maryellen Langhout, LPC, NBCCC – the career counselor in the Chicago office…

ML in office_Cropped_12.6.11 — Maryellen Langhout, Chicago Career Counselor, LPC, NBCCC

1. What is Career Transition For Dancers?

Career Transition For Dancers is the only nonprofit organization in the US solely dedicated to the career needs of dancers. With offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and a mobile National Outreach Project, we have helped thousands of dancers take their first steps in discovering rewarding second careers.

Career Transition For Dancers arose out of a partnership of several foundations and unions, including the National Endowment for the Arts, AFL-CIO Labor Institute for Human Enrichment, and Actors’ Equity Association. Under the leadership of Agnes de Mille, this partnership led to the development and presentation of a conference held in 1982 at Lincoln Center to discuss the need to assist dancers both during and at the end of their careers. The goal of the conference was to find ways to help dancers make use of their individual backgrounds, talents and skills on and off the stage.

2. How did it get started?

Career Transition For Dancers was founded in 1985 by Edward Weston and was originally administered as an initiative of The Actors Fund in New York City. The program was also supported by Actors’ Equity Association, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, American Guild of Musical Artists, and the Screen Actors Guild. The funding provided by these organizations continues today. The original program provided career counseling and scholarship support for the members of these unions who were in the process of transition. In 1988, Career Transition For Dancers became a self-governing 501(c)(3) organization with a refocused mission to help all dancers, not just union members.

3. What is your role in the organization? [Read more…]

Student Spotlight: Charlotte Jeffery

September 26, 2012 by Ashley David

Next in our “Student Spotlight” series, meet Charlotte Jeffery…

1. Can you tell readers how you became involved (and continued to be involved) with dance?

The start of my dance love affair began with ballet. Like hundreds of thousands of little girls across the world, when I was four, my Mum asked me if I wanted to do ballet, I said yes and it spiraled from there.

I began my ‘training’ (if we can call it that) in a drafty school hall with good toes, bad toes and winning little silver cups for my brilliant portrayal of a Siamese cat. I took all my ballet exams, and jumped around from syllabus to syllabus, I even spent one summer school at the Royal Ballet School, at White Lodge and was a Junior Associate of the Arts Educational School in Tring.

I was a ballet girl for a very long time (and still am in reality) but started contemporary when I was twelve or eleven – this incredibly cool teacher came to teach at our school (where we had dance as part of the curriculum) and introduced contemporary to all of us.

It was only natural therefore that when I continued dancing into GCSE and A level that I would take it higher into degree level. I have just graduated from Middlesex University with a 2:1 in Dance Studies.

While I was there I had the most incredible opportunity to study abroad. I traveled to the east cost of the USA, to Goucher College, in Baltimore where I stayed for four months and continued to train. I can honestly say now, that although it was one of the hardest four months of my life, emotionally and physically, it was also one of the best!!

Training in the states opened up yet more options for me and more choices for career paths. I trained in aerial dance (very scary but amazing) took contemporary, ballet, pointe work, a very intense choreography course and even got to work with some underprivileged children in the poorest area of Baltimore helping them to learn how to read and write by using movement as a tool for learning.

Now as a recent graduate I have decided to take the freelance route. I feel that there are far too many options for me, and I want to do so much, that I’m going to try and do it all; I call myself a freelance teacher, writer, community artist, dancer, arts administrator, choreographer… and the list is growing!

This has meant that even since I’ve graduated I’ve written reviews for up and coming companies, am currently in rehearsal for the opening ceremony of the Paralympics (29^th August 2012), I have taught workshops at primary schools, and as of this week (until about Christmas time) I am working at the Royal Ballet School as an Interim Development and Publicity Coordinator. (See I told you I was a real ballet bod at heart!) As of September I will add a new title to my belt, Artist in Residence, at a school in Buckinghamshire teaching lots of the extra curricular dance and some admin there too.

2. What do you find you like best about dance class? [Read more…]

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