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#FlashbackFriday: Nora Kaye Left Her First Rehearsal With Antony Tudor "Screaming"

Radford Bascome, Courtesy DM Archives

On January 17, 1920, one of American ballet's most celebrated dance actresses was born. Nora Kaye's father was an actor who'd worked under Konstantin Stanislavski; her earliest ballet teacher was Ballets Russes choreographer Michel Fokine. ("He was more interested in creating roles than in teaching class," she recalled in the February 1965 issue of Dance Magazine.)

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Ballet Stars

Legendary British Ballet Dancer Christine DuBoulay Ellis Passed Away

Courtesy Joffrey Ballet

Christine DuBoulay Ellis, legendary figure in classical ballet, died on Saturday, November 9, of complications from Parkinson's disease. She was 96.

She was one of the last surviving members of the original Sadler's Wells cast of The Sleeping Beauty, which opened at the Royal Opera House, London, in 1946.

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Can We Please Stop Talking About Sergei Polunin?

Sergei Polunin. Photo by British Broadcasting Corporation and Polunin Ltd., Courtesy Sundance Selects.

Last week, Variety reported that Sergei Polunin would reunite with the team behind Dancer for another documentary. "Where 'Dancer' looked at his whole life, family and influences," director Steven Cantor said, " 'Satori' will focus more squarely on his creative process as performer and, for the first time ever, choreographer." The title references a poorly received evening of work by the same name first presented by Polunin in 2017. (It recently toured to Moscow and St. Petersburg.)

I cannot be the only person wondering why we should care.

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My Memories of Alicia Before Alonso

A flyer showing Alberto Alonso, Fernando Alonso, Benjamin Steinberg and Alicia Alonso. Photo courtesy the author

Alicia has died. I walked around my apartment feeling her spirit, but knowing something had changed utterly.

My father, the late conductor Benjamin Steinberg, was the first music director of the Ballet de Cuba, as it was called then. I grew up in Vedado on la Calle 1ra y doce in a building called Vista al Mar. My family lived there from 1959 to 1963. My days were filled with watching Alicia teach class, rehearse and dance. She was everything: hilarious, serious, dramatic, passionate and elegiac. You lost yourself and found yourself when you loved her.

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The Dance Community Has Come Together Over Lara Spencer's Comments. But Who Is Being Left Out?

The ballet class in front of the Good Morning America studio on Monday morning. Caroline Shadle, Courtesy Chava Lansky

Last Friday, Dance Magazine published what has already become our most-read story of all time. At 2.8 million views and counting, our take on Lara Spencer's cruel comments about Prince George taking ballet prompted an enormous response from both the dance community and those who were simply bothered by what amounted to the bullying of a 6-year-old on national television.

But Spencer's comments struck a nerve for dancers especially. Rarely have we seen our field so united, or so passionate.

Most everyone agrees that Spencer's comments were unacceptable and reflect broader ignorance about both dance and gender. But some more nuanced takes have been left out of the hundreds of new stories about the controversy.

We found some perspectives from the dance world you might not have seen yet—and broke down why they're important:

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This Corporate Manager Still Takes Ballet—and She Says It Helps Her Slay Presentations

Collier (right) with Natalia Romanova, one of her teachers from the Russian Ballet International program at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. Courtesy Collier

Working in corporate America can be a grind, so, for many, vacation is a welcome opportunity to relax and unwind. But for Jane Collier, it's a chance to ramp up her ballet training.

Though she's based in Chicago, where she works in global sourcing for Walgreens Boots Alliance, over the last several years she's attended summer intensives at American Ballet Theatre in New York City, the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow and, most recently, the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen.

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6 Get-Fit Tips from an ABT Dancer Who's Also a Certified Trainer

Boren teaching a class for an Equinox event. Photo by Will Mayer for Better Half Productions, Courtesy ABT

We all know that personal trainers can help dancers condition their bodies more effectively. But trainers who are also dancers themselves? Now that's a uniquely valuable perspective.

Take Kathyrn Boren, an American Ballet Theatre corps member who got certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine last summer, following in the footsteps of her colleagues Thomas Forster and Roman Zhurbin. Her weekly Conditioning for Dancers classes in New York City are filled with everyone from athletic men to older women (including one ABT donor who's attended every single time). But those who might get the most out of her workouts are the dance students who attend. They walk away with exercises and advice tailored for their particular challenges—coming from someone who knows those challenges intimately.

Boren recently spoke with Dance Magazine to share her best cross-training advice for dancers looking to improve their fitness.

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Love It or Hate It, Our Editors Discuss All Things Jane Eyre

Devon Teuscher performing the titular role in Jane Eyre. Photo by Gene Schiavone, Courtesy ABT

Story ballets that debut during American Ballet Theatre's spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House are always the subject of much curiosity—and, sometimes, much debate. Cathy Marston's Jane Eyre was no different. The ballet follows the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brönte's novel as she grows from a willful orphan to a self-possessed governess, charting her romance with the haughty Mr. Rochester and the social forces that threaten to tear them apart.

While the ballet was warmly received in the UK when Northern Ballet premiered it in 2016, its reception from New York City–based critics has been far less welcoming. A group of editors from Dance Magazine and two of our sister publications, Dance Spirit and Pointe, sat down to discuss our own reactions.

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Winter 2020
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