News

As ballet nerds, we love when celebs fess up about how dancing fits into their fitness routine. Who’s the most recent to reveal his dedication to the ballet barre? None other than Rolling Stone lead singer and notorious bad boy Mick Jagger.

 

With sun-up to sun-down summer intensive hours approaching, remember that there are some vitamins you can’t get from snacks and meals alone. Researchers have found that athletes who train indoors have low levels of vitamin D due to lack of sunlight. Vitamin D allows bones to absorb the calcium they need to stay strong and it helps to strengthen the immune system.

 

Forty-plus years of history mixed together in one traveling exhibition—can it really be done? Dance Theater of Harlem took on the task, and is now touring Dance Theatre of Harlem: 40 Years of Firsts around the country for fans to enjoy.

 

Many dancers arrive home and pull out their foam roller to ease those sore muscles after rehearsal. But could the need for a post-rehearsal rollout be avoided altogether? Studies show that if you want to help prevent injuries and ease muscle tension, rolling is most useful when done before dancing.

 

David Hallberg is everywhere right now—from the Bolshoi and ABT to fashion magazines to TV. Today, NOWNESS.com, a luxury lifestyle website, premiered a new short dance film called "Hallberg at Work" featuring the ballet star in the ABT studios, performing a solo created for him by Marcelo Gomes. It's an intense, up-close five-minute clip that kind of feels like what would happen if Darren Aronofsky made a dance film...oh, wait.

 

Who's ready for the Mariinsky Ballet to pop off their movie theater screen tomorrow? Ekaterina Kondaurova is! We love this pic of her in a tutu, tiara and 3-D glasses. She's starring in the James Cameron–produced live 3D screening of Swan Lake tomorrow. U.S. theaters will begin showing it at 6:30 pm. Check out fathomevents.com for ticket info and local listings near you.

Somewhere in the history of ballet, a rumor started that dancers weren't very smart. Luckily, there are plenty of brilliant ballerinas who prove that rumor wrong. Take, for example, Melissa Thomas, a former American Ballet Theatre dancer who just graduated from Columbia University with a degree in psychology. She's now planning to pursue a master's degree in social work and eventually practice clinical psychotherapy. But as she tells it, ballet not only gave her the discipline she needed to succeed in her second career, it also became a passion that will never leave her.

 

The Kennedy Center will be overrun with ballet dancers this week. The third Ballet Across America festival starts today, and it’s a truly national celebration: The three programs feature Richmond Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Sarasota Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, The Washington Ballet, Ballet Austin and Pennsylvania Ballet. Amy Aldridge, a PAB principal who performed in the festival’s first incarnation, is back to do Choleric in The Four Temperaments.

 

Is ballet's post-Balanchine choreography rut finally over? Roslyn Sulcas, a contributor to Pointe, argues today in The New York Times that it is. She points out that works by Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky and Wayne McGregor offer a completely new way of using the classical vocabulary.

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet dancers are in the pop culture spotlight once again. After making its Hollywood debut in 2011's The Adjustment Bureau, the company is currently starring in a viral ad campaign for 2(X)IST, a designer men's underwear label. The short film clip, titled ENDS, features dancers Rachelle Scott, Joaquim De Santana and Guillaume Quéau performing choreography by artistic director Benoit Swan Pouffer—with both of the guys modeling 2(X)IST's new "Speed" line of briefs.