Conversations on Dance

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(73) Ivonne Lemus: Ballet Mistress at Next Generation Ballet & Former Soloist with National Ballet of Cuba Jan 02, 2018

Show notes

Today we talk with Ivonne Lemus: Ballet Mistress at Next Generation Ballet & Former Soloist with National Ballet of Cuba. We took a quick break over the holiday from our regularly scheduled programming, but while we were on our break, we went to Tampa to teach master classes, host a lecture, and record interviews with the dancers, staff, and guest artists of Next Generation Ballet. Today we talk with NGB’s Ballet Mistress, Ivonne Lemus. Ivonne trained at the National School of Ballet in Havana, Cuba, where she graduated in 1986. She then went on to join the National Ballet of Cuba where she danced under the direction of Alicia Alonso for a decade. After her promotion to soloist in Cuba, she went on to join the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. After her dancing career, she has gone on to teach all over the country, joining Next Generation Ballet’s full-time teaching staff in 2007. We talk with Ivonne about what he training was like in Cuba, about dancing for Alicia, how she defected and ended up in Canada, and how she is now producing the next generation of professional dancers.

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Bonus Episode: More from Next Generation Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker’ Dec 22, 2017

Show notes

Welcome to a special episode of Conversations on Dance. We are in Tampa, Florida this week covering Next Generation Ballet and their Nutcracker run at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. In the coming weeks we will be releasing content with the staff including Director Philip Neal and Ballet Mistress Ivonne Lemus and their guest artists performing this weekend. So stayed tuned for that. But today, we will be talking with some of the students who will be featured in the production: Stephen Myers, Audra Cockrell, Virginia Archer, Avery Jarrard, and Abigail White.

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Bonus Episode: Next Generation Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker’ Dec 21, 2017

Show notes

Welcome to a special episode of Conversations on Dance. We are in Tampa, Florida this week covering Next Generation Ballet and their Nutcracker run at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. In the coming weeks we will be releasing content with the staff including Director Philip Neal and Ballet Mistress Ivonne Lemus and their guest artists performing this weekend. So stayed tuned for that. But today, we will be talking with some alumni of the Next Generation Ballet: Jordan Martinez of the Royal Ballet School and Alexandra de Roos of the School of American Ballet.

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(72) Balanchine’s ‘Jewels’ with Bob Gottlieb: author, editor, and dance critic Dec 18, 2017

Show notes

As our final episode of 2017, we are saluting this year’s biggest ballet celebration, 50 years of George Balanchine’s “Jewels.” Today we take an in depth look at Balanchine’s ‘Jewels’ with Bob Gottlieb: author, editor, and dance critic. Bob has been editor-and-chief of Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf, and the New Yorker. Gottlieb is widely considered to be one of the greatest editors of the second half of the 20th century. For many years he was associated with the New York City Ballet during Balanchine’s time, often contributing to programming and serving on the Board of Directors. He currently sits on the Board of Trustees of Miami City Ballet. We always enjoy talking with Bob, and sometimes veer off topic, and in this case, around 45 minutes into this episode, our bun-head sides take over. Today we talk extensively with Bob about Balanchine’s process, the premier of Jewels, the original cast, and how the ballet is being danced today.

This will be our last full-format episode of 2017. Over this past year, our podcast has grown more than we could have ever fathomed, with 110,000 listens last month alone. We want to thank all of our listeners for your support and we wish you a very happy holidays and a happy New Year.

Though we won’t be releasing any more full episodes until January, this week we will be in Tampa, Florida at Next Generation Ballet teaching master classes, hosting a live lecture, and recording content surrounding their Nutcracker performancers. We will be chatting with New York City Ballet Principals Sara Mearns and Amar Ramasar who will be dancing the Sugar Plum pas de deux, as well as former Miami City Ballet Principal Patricia Delgado, and current MCB Principal Renan Cerdeiro, who will also be guesting with Next Generation Ballet. We will be releasing bonus content later this week to celebrate the ballet that consumes us all right now, “The Nutcracker.” So stay tuned! We have posted ticket information for Next Generation Ballet on our Facebook page.

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(71) Calvin Royal III, American Ballet Theatre Soloist Dec 11, 2017

Show notes

This week we are going back into our vault from our time at the Vail Dance Festival this past summer, for another episode with a festival favorite. Today we talk Calvin Royal III, American Ballet Theatre Soloist. Calvin started his formal ballet training at the age of 14 in St. Petersburg, Florida. In April of 2006 he was a finalist at the Youth America Grand Prix Scholarship Comeptition in New York City, and joined ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onnasis School a few months later. He joined ABT II (now the ABT Studio Company) in 2007, and joined the main company in 2010. Royal was a 2014 winner of a grant from the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund. He was promoted to soloist just this past summer. We talk with Calvin about how he got his start in ballet despite being 14, how he quickly caught up with his peers, what the Fellowship Fund grant has afforded him, and what he looks forward to as a new soloist.

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(70) Lauren Lovette, New York City Ballet Principal Dancer Dec 04, 2017

Show notes

This week we are heading into our vault from our time at the Vail Dance Festival this past summer, where we spoke with many of the festival’s amazing and talented artists. Today we talk with Lauren Lovette, New York City Ballet Principal Dancer who was not only dancing at the festival, but also choreographing a new piece. Lauren began dancing at the age of 11 at the Cary Ballet Conservatory in Cary, North Carolina. She attended summer courses at the School of American Ballet during the summers of 2004 and 2005 and became a year-round student in 2006. After joining New York City Ballet as member of the corps de ballet in 2010, she became a principal dancer in 2015. We talk with Lauren about her start in ballet, how she became interested in choreography, how becoming a vegan has changed her dancing, and about her new ballet that premiered a few nights after we recorded this episode.

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(69) Allynne Noelle, Suzanne Farrell Ballet First Soloist Nov 27, 2017

Show notes

This week we are joined by Allynne Noelle, Suzanne Farrell Ballet First Soloist. Allynne started her training at the age of five in Southern California and began her professional career at age 15 with Ballet Pacifica. In 2003 she joined Miami City Ballet where she would dance as a soloist until leaving the company in 2010. After battling some serious injuries, she recovered and joined Los Angeles Ballet as a Principal in 2011. In 2015 she joined The Suzanne Farrell Ballet. She will be dancing in the company’s final shows entitled, “Forever Balanchine: Farewell Performances” at the Kennedy Center December 7th- 9th. We caught up with Allynne while we were visiting the Kennedy Center in October. She was kind enough to join us in the middle of her first day of rehearsals for these performances. We talk with her about her career, struggles with injuries, her love of working with Suzanne, and she offers a preview of what audiences can expect from the Suzanne Farrell Ballet’s Farewell Performances.

For more information on these performances and other happenings at the Kennedy Center, visit kennedy-center.org.

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(68) Live From The Kennedy Center: Mariinsky Ballet Director Yuri Fateev and Dancer Timur Askerov Nov 13, 2017

Show notes

Welcome to Live From The Kennedy Center: Mariinsky Ballet Director Yuri Fateev and Dancer Timur Askerov. A few weeks ago we were in Washington, DC to cover a busy weekend of ballet at the Kennedy Center. While we were there, the Mariinsky Ballet was in town performing La Bayadère. We had the pleasure of sitting down with the acting director of the Mariinsky, Yuri Fateev and one of their star dancers, Timur Askerov. Mr. Fateev graduated from the Leningrad Academic Vaganova Choreography School in 1982 and joined the Mariinsky Ballet the same year. In 1996 he became a coach with the Mariinsky and has been a guest coach with the Royal Ballet in London, ABT, and Russia’s Bolshoi Theatre. He has been Acting Head of the Mariinsky Ballet since 2008. Mr. Askerov was born in Azerbaijan and graduated from the Baku School of Dance in 2008. From 2009–2011 he danced in Ukraine before joining the Mariinsky in 2011. He has danced lead roles in the majority of the company’s repetoire and has toured with the Mariinsky to Europe, Asia, and America.

Timur prefered to answer our questions in Russian, so Yuri was nice enough to translate for us. In this version of the interview we have done a voice over to translate for Timur. If you would like to listen to Timur’s complete answers in Russian, we have tacked that interview on in it’s entirety to the end of this episode. To listen to that version, please fast forward to 50 minutes and 30 seconds in the time stamp now. We really enjoyed chatting with these two to get a better idea of what is happening at the Mariinsky, so we hope you enjoy this interview as much as we did.

This episode is sponsored by Body Wrappers and The Kennedy Center. For more on the events happening at the Kennedy Center, visit kennedy-center.org.

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(67) Live From the Kennedy Center: Damian Woetzel & Tiler Peck on Jerome Robbins Nov 04, 2017

Show notes

Welcome to Live From the Kennedy Center: Damian Woetzel & Tiler Peck on Jerome Robbins. Two weeks ago we were in Washington, DC to cover a busy weekend of ballet at the Kennedy Center. We arrived on Friday night just in time to watch an exceptional performance entitled “DEMO: Jerome Robbins- An American Dance Genius.” These DEMO programs are curated by former New York City Ballet Principal, Artistic Director of the Vail Dance Festival, and incoming president of Julliard, Damian Woetzel. Damian hosted the evening, which gave audiences an educational behind the scenes look at working with Jermone Robbins and dancing his ballets. He brought 5 New York City Ballet dancers with him to demonstrate multiple excerpts of Robbins ballets: Tyler Angle, Tiler Peck, Unity Phelan, Amar Ramasar, and Daniel Ulbricht. Damian’s wife, and former New York City Ballet Principal, (also a former Conversations on Dance guest) Heather Watts, was a special guest for the evening. The dancers were all clad in rehearsal attire, the stage was bare, with the exceptions of a few barres to constitue sets, organized onstage just as they are in the studios for rehearsals. The evening started with Robbins’ first work “Fancy Free,” and moved in mostly chronological order, to include his Broadway work, his return to NYCB in 1969, and his interest in choreographing to Chopin’s music. One highlight of the evening was when Ms. Watts coached Ms. Peck in “Afternoon of a Faun.” The evening included so much history, details, and background on these ballets, that we invited Damian and Tiler Peck to join us the next day for a debrief of the performance.

For more information on performances and events at the Kennedy Center, visit kennedy-center.org.

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(66) Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Tanaquil Le Clercq’s ‘The Ballet Cook Book’ Oct 30, 2017

Show notes

Today on the Conversations on Dance podcast, we have a very special episode in store. We are offering a preview of this weekend’s Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Tanaquil Le Clercq’s ‘The Ballet Cook Book,’ a 50th Anniversary Celebration. In 1967, ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq published The Ballet CookBook, a fascinating compilation of ballet history, food stories, and recipes from over 90 leading dancers and choreographers of her generation, including George Balanchine, Jacques d’Amboise, Melissa Hayden, and Allegra Kent. For the book’s 50th anniversary, food scholar Meryl Rosofsky is curating a program honoring Le Clercq’s artistic, literary, and culinary legacy as a part of the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim museum in New York City. Today we talk with Meryl, who, as part of the event, will be sharing her findings from her fall 2016 fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU where she delved into the cultural history of Tanaquil’s book. We are also joined by New York City Ballet Principal dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring, who is a passionate at home chef and has been working with Meryl to curate this event. Joining the pair at the Guggenheim on November 5th and 6th will be Jacques d’Amboise and Allegra Kent who were both at Tanaquil’s book signing 50 years ago, and New York City Ballet Principal Jared Angle, whom Meryl and Adrian reference often in this episode. The program will include discussions with the panelists, interspersed live performances, and The Wright restaurant at the Guggenheim will serve select dishes from The Ballet Cook Book. Catch Meryl and Adrian at the Guggenheim this Sunday and Monday, November 5th and 6th at 7:30. For more information on “Works & Process at the Guggenheim,” go to worksandprocess.org.

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