Near the season’s halfway point, the standouts are established and the reliable choreographers can be expected to deliver. Here are a few routines that I prized from this season’s Latin Night. 1. Calvin Johnson and Lindsay Arnold, Argentine Tango A refreshingly stripped-down Argentine tango where the focus is on pure dance connection — and a…
Category: Dance
Behind the Scenes, Dance, Feature, Ice Dance, Profile
From the Archives: Pasquale Camerlengo
Pasquale Camerlengo with Angelika Krylova and long-time students Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje at the 2014 World Figure Skating Championships. (Photo by Chris McGrath for Getty Images AsiaPac) by Jacquelyn Thayer Continuing our cutting room floor series, these insights from Pasquale Camerlengo were captured during a June 2015 interview. As a competitive ice dancer in…
Dance, Quick Steps
Wednesday Watch: Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite
For this post-World Ballet Day Wednesday Watch, enjoy Twyla Tharp’s efforts to integrate the feel of social dance and a little retro style into the world of balletic technique, with this 1984 broadcast of her 1983 Sinatra Suite — a truncated version of the previous year’s longer Nine Sinatra Songs, which calls for casting a…
Dance, Quick Steps
Dancing With the Stars, Season 23: Week 4 in Review
By week four, Dancing With the Stars contestants are beginning to shake out in terms of finalist potential, long run promise, and likely fodder. This week’s Cirque du Soleil theme set the stage for a few season-best performances, though wide range in terms of content-heavy material. 1. Laurie Hernandez and Val Chmerkovskiy picked up the…
Dance, Quick Steps
Dancing With the Stars, Season 23: Week 2 in Review
Week 2 usually marks a bit of a lull, as couples now face only one week to prepare a routine and most celebrities still have considerable room to grow. And when paired with “TV Theme Night” and its often ill-suited musical selections, there’s another level of added difficulty. Still, a number of performances rose above…
Dance, Quick Steps
Dancing With the Stars, Season 23: Week 1 in Review
With the season return of Dancing With the Stars, each Tuesday Moving in Measure will be recapping the previous night’s episode by highlighting three (or so) dances worth a watch — or rewatch. Allowances are made for a celebrity’s reasonable level of technique; we’re evaluating these things on a sliding scale. 1. Gymnasts are not…
Dance, Quick Steps
Wednesday Watch: Balboa
A little of lindy and a little of blues, the Balboa (born in Jazz Age California of a bit of dancefloor pragmatism) and its Bal-Swing variant can in some ways be the best of all worlds: closed hold and connections, quick tempo and (in the swing style) a few flourishes — and even, perhaps, a…
Dance, Quick Steps
Happy National Dance Day!
Given National Dance Day‘s origins in 2010 as the brainchild of dancer, television producer and director, and Dizzy Feet Foundation co-president Nigel Lythgoe, we’re paying tribute here with a look at a few times Lythgoe’s So You Think You Can Dance brought social dance to the stage with some success: 1-2. Heidi Groskreutz and Benji…
Behind the Scenes, Dance, Feature, Ice Dance, Profile
From the Archives: Mark Pillay
by Jacquelyn Thayer Author’s Note: In summer 2015, I interviewed several top choreographers from the figure skating world for a feature in Dance International magazine’s Winter 2015 issue. Due to space limitations, some great insight was left on the cutting room floor — until now. In a new series, Moving in Measure delivers a closer…
Dance, Quick Steps
Wednesday Watch: Celebrating the US and Canada
In honor of two upcoming national holidays — the Fourth of July in the U.S. and Canada Day on July 1 — this Wednesday Watch is dedicated to some truly North American treasures. Few composers are more quintessentially connected with America than Aaron Copland, and Martha Graham’s choreography for his Appalachian Spring is a foundational…
