The original St. Petersburg production of Marius Petipa's "The Sleeping Beauty" was the Disney show of its time, complete with moving set pieces, gloriously painted backdrops, half a thousan…
The Washington Ballet opened the 2018-2019 season with “TWB Welcomes,” a welcome both to the company’s audience and to the four guest dancers from the American Ballet Theat…
I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance. " Garth Brooks, "The Dance" Main Street of historic Ellicott City rests uneasily on a slope. Near the top, in relative safet…
Charlotte Salomon (Caroline Preziosi) was an artist from a well-off family living in Berlin through the rise of the Third Reich. Her family was Jewish. Less than a year before being captured…
Entering the theater for Creative Cauldron's “Charlotte's Web” musical felt like stepping onto the Zuckerman family farm, the setting of E.B. White's classic children's story. Th…
In the Middle Ages, the English people would venture out into the woods and fields on the eve of May 1st to "bring in the May." They would gather flowers and greenery, bringing them back bef…
According to legend, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote “Aria with diverse variations for a harpsichord with two manuals” around 1741 to comfort a Russian ambassador suffering from inso…
Before seeing “Works by Balanchine, Martins & Peck” this week at the Kennedy Center, I had only known the New York City Ballet (NYC Ballet) as a researcher: through old films…
In the program notes, choreographer Kyle Abraham revealed the driving force of "Dearest Home." In the year leading up to the premiere, his mother died and he ended a relationship with the ma…
Classical story ballets tend to be about sinister things. A cursed spindle ("The Sleeping Beauty"), a spellbound swan ("Swan Lake"), a haunted prince ("Giselle"). Even "The Nutcracker" has d…
Most striking about Irish dance is the near total absence of port de bras"the movement of arms. The torso remains rigid, with the arms stick straight at the sides or at right angles against …
After graduating from Towson University in 2014, aspiring professional ballerina Margaret "Maggie"Â Kudirka earned a spot in the Joffrey Ballet Concert Group (JCG), a touring company of st…