Stravinsky mashed up with hip-hop

Decadance Vs. The Firebird is an urban ballet for the 21st Century. Mashing up Stravinsky's score with original, hip-hop beats, fusing breakdancing with ballet, and remixing the classic story into a contemporary text, the all-female cast challenges the ballet convention of a 'handsome prince' and instead creates a world where women battle for the right to rule the dance floor. A high energy dance performance ready to entertain diverse audiences of all ages, Decadance Vs. The Firebird presents a new vision for hip-hop dance theatre.

Sample Stravinsky mashed up with hip-hop, if you dare, by following the path from here to multimedia to the video of Decadance Vs The Firebeird.

Now read how dance is not an inferior art form.
Image credit Bumbershoot. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Israel can do dance

I do think dance is under-represented on the blogs. So I was delighted to notice Israel Dance linking to my recent article Black people can't do ballet.

Now read why Dance is not an inferior art form
Photo credit Ballet Black. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Dance is not an inferior art form

For too many people – especially musicians – dance is considered an inferior art form, less valuable than spoken theatre and less important than opera. However, to my mind it was one of the key areas of artistic innovation and audience growth in the twentieth century, and without Diaghilev (right) much of the innovation would not have happened.

The late and lamented John Drummond gives musicians food for thought as they search for new audiences in the 21st century. Taken from his autobiography Tainted by Experience (Faber, ISBN 0571200540). And I can only echo Drummond's thoughts on dance. My love of those 20th century masterpieces, Prokofiev's five piano concertos, was sparked by seeing a modern dance performance to the extraordinary First Concerto back in the 1970s at Sadler Wells. I cannot exactly remember the company, but am pretty sure it was Ballet Rambert. Which does prompt me to ask why we don't hear Prokofiev's wonderful piano concertos and violin concertos more often? Are they simply a victim of the current love affair with everything Shostakovich?

For the five Prokofiev piano concertos look no further than the bargain double CD with Vladimir Ashkenazy playing and André Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. The recordings date from 1974 and 1975, and Previn was released from his exclusive EMI contract specially for the sessions as Ashkenazy wouldn't record them with anyone else. Decca house producer Ray Minshull was in charge, and the venue was the late and lamented Kingsway Hall. The First Concerto plays as I write and, sorry to be a bore, but they don't make CDs like that anymore. The Kingsway Hall had acoustics to die for, and was venue for many classic recordings including Britten's own interpretation of his War Requiem. The hall was last used for recording in 1984, and was demolished in 1998, to be replaced by a faceless international hotel.

Now read about an inspirational 21st century dance company.
Image credit - Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev by Valentin Serov (1904). Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

" Black people can’t do ballet "

Cassa Pancho, the British-Trinidadian artistic director of Ballet Black, has heard countless excuses over the years for the lack of black dancers in classical ballet - such as no one wanting to see one black swan in the corps de ballet. So many excuses in fact, that in her third year at the Royal Academy of Dance she made it the subject of her dissertation. "I thought I'd interview four or five black ballerinas and see what they had to say - I couldn't find one," she says. "It was a shock." This sorry state of affairs led her to create Ballet Black, the UK's only classical ballet company for black and Asian dancers, in 2001.

Pancho was driven to distraction by the racist stereotyping she encountered, including "black people can't do ballet"; "black women have big bottoms and feet that are unsuitable for pointe work"; "black dancers in the corps are not aesthetically pleasing". She is not the first person to challenge what sometimes seems to be the last bastion of racism in the art world. Les Ballets Nègres was Europe's first black dance company, performing between 1946 and 1952, while Arthur Mitchell founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969.

Of late the debate has started up again, following revelations about the English National Ballet principal Simone Clarke's membership of the British National Party and her comments on immigration. "In this country either we have freedom of choice and of speech or we don't," says Pancho of the furore. "You cannot sack somebody from their job for their political beliefs." Whatever one may think, the story has at least cast a spotlight on the issue. At the last count, the Royal Ballet had three black and six Asian dancers in their 93-strong company. Of those, only two are principals - Miyako Yoshida and the hugely popular Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta, the first black principal in the company, and now patron of Ballet Black. The ENB has seven black or Asian dancers - 11 per cent of the total company.

From an excellent double page article in today’s Independent by Alice Jones. But Cassa Pancho is wrong when she says “You cannot sack somebody from their job for their political beliefs.” Police Officers in England and Wales are barred from belonging to the British National Party, the far right organisation that star dancer Simone Clarke is a member of.

Now, for more on diversity in the performing arts, and downloads of music by the Tunisian/French composer Roland Dyens, visit BBC Proms – a multicultural society?

+ In memory of choreographer Glen Tetley who died on January 26th 2007, aged 80, His ballets included Pierrot Lunaire to Schoenberg's music, Voluntaries to Poulenc's Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani, Field Figures to Stockhausen, and Laborintus to Berio. +

Photo credit Ballet Black. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk