Margaret Fuhrer's blog

I wasn't planning to write about Ballet Nacional de Cuba, performing this week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In fact, I was relieved that I didn't have to. How can you evaluate a company so storied? Its founder, the incomparable Alica Alonso, is already enshrined in the ballet canon. It is rabidly adored by its Cuban fans. It has catapulted so many spectacular Cuban dancers--Carlos Acosta, Jose Manuel Carreño, Lorna and Lorena Feijóo--into the international spotlight. The weight of its reputation, I thought, is too crushing; there isn't any room for objective analysis.

Since 1997, American Ballet Theatre's "Make a Ballet" program has offered NYC schoolchildren the opportunity to design and produce original performance pieces.

Senior editor Jenny Stahl recently called New York City Ballet principal Daniel Ulbricht "Superman," and I can't think of a better way to describe the phenomenally talented dancer and teacher, who seems to be everywhere at once these days. (We recently posted a poll asking who your favorite dancer-teacher was, and Ulbricht cleaned up.)

Click here to watch video footage from the 2011 Tremplin Jeunes Ballets. Look for more on the event in an upcoming issue of Pointe.

The dreaded audition tour: It's a time-consuming, expensive, nerve-wracking part of a young dancer's career. And yet, until a few years ago, it was pretty much the only way to get a job, particularly if you had your sights set on a company on the other side of the country--or the world.

It's not hard to see why ballet dancers around the world have fallen in love with Yumiko's sleek leotards, which are not only stylish but also cut and constructed to flatter real dancers' bodies.

One of the things we love most about Black Swan is that it gets all the little details right--down to the practice clothes. Nina and Lily's refined leotards are exactly the sort of chic, understated pieces real ballerinas would wear. That's unsurprising, given that dancewear superstar Yumiko designed the leos especially for stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.

You have to wonder how much experience Petipa actually had with swans. They're elegant and graceful, yes--but they're also mean, hissy, scary even. The male swans of Matthew Bourne's wildly popular Swan Lake hit much closer to the mark, in that respect, than Petipa's tutu-clad flock. Bourne's beastly birds are seductive and arrogant--about as far from damsels in distress as you can get. Instead, they're symbols of freedom and empowerment. Bourne's Prince doesn't attempt to rescue his Swan--the Swan rescues the Prince.

Oh, ballet dancers: We're nothing if not perfectionists. From our first class we're programmed to eliminate flaws--or at least camouflage them.

Ah, summer in NYC's Central Park: Sun, fun and--hundreds of girls in pointe shoes? That was the delightfully incongruous scene this Monday, August 2nd as hundreds of ballerinas gathered in the park in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for "Most Ballerinas on Pointe at One Time." (The previous record of 220 was set at the Youth America Grand Prix last year.)  American Ballet Theatre's Craig Salstein and Michele Wiles led the attempt, which was the brainchild of former ABT trustee Ellen Schiavone and well-known dance photographer Gene Schiavone.

The New York City Ballet spent its winter season tackling Big Story Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, A Midsummer Night's Dream. So when I entered the David H. Koch theater last night (right before Sarah Jessica Parker, no less!) for the company's spring gala, I was anticipating--OK, eagerly anticipating--a return to balletic abstraction, to sleek unitards and challenging music and movement for movement's sake.