It’s not every day that you get to see two living legends share the same stage. In 2007, Carmen de Lavallade and Desmond Richardson, trailblazers generations apart, premiered Dwight Rhoden’s Precious Blood at The Joyce Theater in New York. In this clip, the then 76-year-old de Lavallade gives a stunningly elegant performance alongside Richardson, who […]
If you’re a dancer about to graduate high school, you don’t need to be told just how much COVID-19 has taken away from you. You deserve to be celebrated for your accomplishments. And you also deserve a leg up (pun most definitely intended) when it comes to your dance career, since the pandemic has put […]
Proceed with caution: This emotionally charged death scene is balletic but brutal. San Francisco Ballet principal Yuan Yuan Tan and former American Ballet Theatre principal Desmond Richardson perform in this excerpt of Lar Lubovitch’s Othello. The ballet, based on Shakespeare’s play of the same name, was jointly produced by SFB and ABT in 1997, and […]
Ballet superstars don’t get much bigger than Wendy Whelan and Desmond Richardson. This winter, the two inimitable dancers teamed up for a one-night-only performance in New Orleans to commemorate Richardson’s last season as a performer with Complexions. If you haven’t seen Jim Lafferty’s gorgeous shots of their rehearsals in our April/May issue, you’re missing out. […]
Dance and poetry have long enjoyed a fruitful partnership. Across genres, hundreds of choreographed works have integrated elements of spoken word. Now, Complexions Contemporary Ballet has benefited from the two art forms’ compatibility with a new artistic position. On November 14, renowned writer and poet Aaron Dworkin will debut as Complexions’ poetjournalist-in-residence in the company’s […]
The summer before her freshman year at the University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, Jasmine Robinson was offered a traineeship with Complexions Contemporary Ballet. She approached USC, and they made it work: “My first semester, I was able to go to New York for a week,” Robinson says. “While I was there, […]
The dancer, director, and prolific choreographer Gerald Arpino spent his career bringing youthful energy and colorful creativity to ballet stages and, as those who knew him remember, rehearsal studios. “He was wild and passionate,” says Suzanne Lopez, who danced with The Joffrey Ballet from 1991 to 2010, during the majority of Arpino’s tenure as artistic […]
This is Pointe‘s Fall 2020 cover story. Click here to purchase this issue. Talk to anyone about rising contemporary ballerina Tatiana Melendez, and one word is bound to come up repeatedly: “Fierce.” And fair enough, that’s a perfectly apt way to describe the 20-year-old’s stage presence, her technical prowess and her determination to succeed. But […]