As the year draws to a close, it’s a great moment to catch up on children’s books that came out this year, and maybe a title or two you might have missed in 2023. Here are 10 powerful and inspiring stories to share with your young dancers at the studio or in class. Why We Dance: A Story of Hope and Healing (by Deidre Havrelock and Aly McKnight) and Dance Fast (by AR Cribbins) both explore Indigenous dance forms in North America with a young dancer preparing for a ceremony. Why We Dance tells the story of a young girl […]
12 New Dance Books for Every Educator’s Bookshelf
From managing your teaching career to learning the ins and outs of choreography, you’ll find a topic that could spark a personal interest or enliven your upcoming college course in this list of top 12 books of 2024. On Careers Passionate Work: Choreographing a Career, by Ruth Horowitz Artists on Creative Administration: A Workbook from the National Center for Choreography, edited by Tonya Lockyer Ballet Somatics, by Deidre Neal These three books explore career paths through multiple lenses. New York University sociology professor emerita Ruth Horowitz took a deep dive into the careers of dancers in Passionate Work: Choreographing a […]
A Dancer’s Guide to Seasonal Affective Disorder
When Crystal Nicholls was a dancer in The Lion King on London’s West End, she noticed herself feeling more irritable and unhappy during the fall and winter months. Simultaneously, she was dancing more than usual because of extra shows added during the holiday season. “Our Christmas schedule was really packed, but I felt like the thing I wanted to do was hunker down, sleep more, and not go outside, and that made it really difficult to find the energy to do all those extra shows,” Nicholls remembers. Crystal Nicholls. Photo by Mark McGee, Courtesy Nicholls. Many dancers experience an uptick in work […]
How Boston Dance Studios Founder Tara Brown Created the Professional Training Facility She Was Missing
Tara Brown, founder and director of Boston Dance Studios, never dreamed of opening a studio—in fact, she was originally against the career path. “I didn’t believe [owning a studio] could be lucrative and I knew it would be a lot of work,” she says. After a commercial dance career in New York City, Brown moved to Boston in 2020. As a dancer, she was confronted with a lack of professional training opportunities, particularly for “short, curvy Black women” like herself. She was pursuing avenues to teach heels classes in the city and was often turned away by studios who saw […]
Shijith Nambiar and Parvathy Menon took the route less travelled to explore ‘Chidananda Margam’
Music, movement, space and lights flowed in an orchestrated manner, and the core ideas of the composition were explored with finesse in the choreography
Coimbatore to host Bharatanatyam dance festival Lil Margazhi
The dance festival has been exclusively tailored for children, and will also feature a story-telling session
“Like Making an Omelet” Is How Espen Giljane Describes This Classic Ballet Movement
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How Deanna McBrearty Teaches a Soutenu
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I Tried “Make It Dance,” the New Dancer-Friendly Card Game From Cost n’ Mayor
Did your family Thanksgiving celebration include a trio of grandmas dancing to Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”? A solo act of a vampire rocking out to Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”? If not, you may want to get your hands on a copy of Make It Dance, Cost n’ Mayor’s new card game. As the title implies, players are given a zany scenario and encouraged to make it dance. A well-known dancing duo boasting over 10 million followers across social media, Cost n’ Mayor created this interactive game to encourage dancers and nondancers to move, laugh, […]
Daoyuan Chen Is Leading the Next Generation at N&D Ballet
One defining quality dance training offers is honing a person’s ability to react to situations in real time. Whether salvaging an onstage mishap, hiding an error from the audience, or making quick decisions about survival when tragedy strikes, a dancer’s training informs them how to pivot quickly both onstage and in life. This was exactly the scenario for Daoyuan Chen, artistic director and founder of N&D Ballet, when he suffered a devastating ankle injury during The Nutcracker three months after joining Boston Ballet in 2012. “I didn’t expect my performance career to end at 22 years old,” says Chen. “I […]