Hello....again!

I know this will sound crazy, but I just remembered this blog! It's been over a year since I posted, but during that time we've got over 120,000 fans and focused on our website: www.thewonderfulworldofdance.com, but I think we'll come back to our blog and share our interviews with dancers, artistic directors and choreographers, reviews and news. 

So see you on the blog stage!

Savannah x

Wonderful Review: Miami’s Brazzdance 10yr Anniversary performance

Wonderful Review: Miami’s Brazzdance 10yr Anniversary performance

By Diana Dunbar

“It all starts with an idea”

Miami’s leading contemporary dance company Augusto Soledade Brazzdance celebrates their 10 year anniversary with ‘Oduns’, a multi-cultural inspired programme by choreographer Augusto Soledade.

Soledade’s Dreaming Amazonia is the opening piece, which he has dedicated to Garth Fagan (choreographer of the Lion King), Soledade’s teacher and mentor. He calls Fagan a “creative genius” and says it was Fagan who taught him “how to manipulate the dancers in space and establish a relationship with music; how to develop the choreographic idea- the moment to moment.”

Brazzdance. Photo by MagicalPhotos.com / Mitchell Zachs

Dreaming Amazonia contains ideas about the Amazon, Brazil, different cultures, and the power of dance. It is as lovely and as complex as the Amazon, after which it is titled. The dancers are at once both a part of our world and of another; they seem to wrestle with the meeting of two worlds. Running, leaping, and turning in another place and time with only the forest and the winding river to stand witness.

Soledade spent 15 day in the Amazon in his native country of Brazil before choreographing Dreaming Amazonia. There he visited the native Brazilian preserves to study their way of life. He states that he was “intellectually intrigued by how the native Brazilians knew how to navigate the forest without roads. In a city we are guided; we know how to get to a place.”

Dreaming Amazonia brings the two worlds together. At times the dancers navigate the stage as if led by an internal guide. At other times they appear to be on a crowded road. At one point they all, save one, climb into the bucket and are pressed tightly together as riders on a crowded subway. What happens when two worlds collide? In Amazonia it is a remarkable flow of movement performed by highly skilled and talented dancers. We are watching a people fight for their existence knowing the bucket is never far off.

Altars – Photo: Mitchell Zachs

“Choreography,” said Soledade, “starts with an idea.” The idea for Altars, the second piece on the program and set to the Cantatas by Johan Sebastian Bach, features aspects of the Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomble. This piece is dedicated to Clyde Morgan, one of Soledade’s earliest teacher and also a mentor to him.

The dancers appear dusted in white and wearing all white. The piece begins with a beautiful duet where the dancers seem to revere each other and the Candomble religion. They are joined by other dancers in white and the stage is given over to ancient rituals. The audience becomes active participants when they are given roses and fruit to place on the altar they help to create. It is an act of a community coming together; it is powerful and timeless.

Augusto Soledade is a Guggenheim Fellow (2008) with a desire to explore different cultures while blending them with his own. “We all have cultural baggage,” he explains, “no matter where you go, you bring your cultural baggage with you.” Soledade is interested in giving himself the opportunity to really create and explore as opposed to working in one specific way.

“I try and bring it all together in ways that are exciting, intriguing, surprising, challenging and creative,” said Soledade. Dreaming Amazonia and Altars does just that.

www.thewonderfulworldofdance.com

Thank you Capezio London

We have been preparing for an interview in a national newspaper with a photo shoot coming up this week. For the photo shoot we needed a tutu and pristine pointe shoes so we asked our Wonderful Members to lend, sell or donate some.

We were absolutely delighted by the support we received, including offerings to send tutus and pointe shoes from around the world from Italy, Japan, and across the UK. However, with only days before the photo shoot there wasn't time to post the kind donations.

So we went into Capezio to purchase a brand new white rehearsal tutu and while we were there the wonderful manager of the Covent Garden store offered to lend us a pair of brand new pointes for the shoot.

We are grateful for their support, kindness and generosity, so we want to say a big thank you to Capazio London!

Happy New Year!

Wishing you a New Year full of dance and joy!

Happy Xmas!

Wishing you a happy Christmas!

Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty

This week we saw Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty gothic style. It was a visual spectacular, beautifully staged with sets drapped in luscious curtains, fairy lights, decadent props that surround the dancers wearing the most stunning costumes bright red, modern, creative and simply astounding.

Earlier, I saw a quick headline review that said something along the lines of 'Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty is style over substance'. While I don't recall the journalist, and didn't feel compelled to look it up, I walked into the theatre with this in mind and I walked about thinking that whoever wrote this doesn't understand Matthew Bourne and his work, doesn't seem to understand that the style is the substance. That dance and ballet can be uber cool, shocking, funny, cute, raunchy and even with minimal choreography it speaks to a new generation in the way that traditional ballets or contemporary dance needs to.

Looking around at the audience at Sadler's Wells Theatre - we were in the cheap seats - everyone was young, under 18 and absolutely loved the production. They laughed, they cheered, they applauded as loud as they screamed their joy. There aren't many productions and ballets that engage so many, the 'youth', as Matthew Bourne does.

I've seen most of Bourne's productions and they always present a new visual staging perspective that is unexpected, dazzling and awe-inspiring. The costumes are always over the top colourful, dramatic, bright and beautiful. The sets are modern, gorgeous, large, immense. The scale of the production, from the lighting, to the music, the narrative conveyed through the dance is like watching a dancical - a bit like a musical but ballet instead of signing.

Bourne takes you off to another world, he invites you to let go, immerse yourself, indulge and mostly enjoy. And yes there's a lot less actual ballet or dance, and a lot more running around, always a waltz, a definite hand gesture or movement that defines the story, like the wings worn by the angels in Sleeping Beauty matched by their hand movements of wings.

Matthew Bourne is a visionary, he is a genius, a stage production spectacular and with a full house filled with the next generation of ballomanes and theatre-goers yelling for another curtain call, we can only hope that he continues to bring his magic to the ballet world for many years to come.

Have dancers become too flexible?

Recently we've posted amazing photos of dancers with almost unbelievable flexibility, which has generated a great deal of comments from our Wonderful Members on Facebook.

So we ask, have dancers become too flexible? Is flexibility more important than emotion and technique? Do we expect our prima ballerinas to be ultra-flexible, and are we disappointed if they're extensions, developes and grande jetes aren't 180 degrees with pointe shoes positioned near their ears?

Some of our Wonderful Members have commented that they feel dancers have become too gymnastic, promoted for their dazzling flexibility rather than their technique perfected over years of hard work. While others are in awe of this unique physical gift and desperately wish they too were born with hyper-extension, in the same way they wish for perfect arches, strong ankles, perfect turn out, flexible back.

There is something undeniably awe-inspiring in a perfect 180 degree penche, think La Sylphide, Odile's developes, Svetlana Zakharova in Don Quixote, Sylvie Guillem, Darcey Bussell, Polina Semionova.

Dancers from a very young age push their bodies and their minds to the limit in the pursuit of perfection. The picture on my dance studio wall when I was young said it all "strive for perfection that can never be attained". And although audiences are dazzled by the high leg, they are moved by the emotional connection and story the dancers share with their audience - every time Juliet dies and Odette is betrayed the audience cries.

Ballet and all other forms of dance constantly evolve as does the training that helps our dancers execute more complex and challenging positions and performances. Dancers, choreographers and teachers all push the boundaries of the possible, which creates a beautiful emotional experience both on and off the stage. Dance is an art that requires heart, strength, passion, dedication and devotion - and the height of an extension will never replace the emotion of dance because it is the dancer's emotions that makes them dance.

Do you agree? Share your view with us.