Grier Cooper's Blog, page 12

Choreographers Discuss Their Inspirations

Have you ever wondered where choreographers find inspiration? How they keep coming up with new ideas and new work? Each of the creative people profiled here have a unique entry point, a personal process of keeping their creative fires alive. There are some common threads… and some surprising responses.

Val Canniperoli, Choreographer, San Francisco Ballet

Val Canniperolithe longtime and much-beloved resident choreographer forSan Francisco Ballethas choreographed ballets for many other companies...

5 Best Places to Dance

I’ve danced in a lot of different places over the past four decades… some of them memorable because they were magnificent, others… not so much. But being one of those people who prefer to focus on the positive, I give you a list of my favorite spots to dance (at least for now… I reserve the right to update the list over time if I find a new fave), in no particular order:

Sweet’s Ballroom. I have a thing for historic buildings, particularly those with architectural details that showcase true cr...

Interview With dance anywhere®’s Beth Fein

photo by Weidong Yang

What if people all over the world stopped to dance? This was the question that led artist Beth Fein to first createdance anywhere® in 2005, and for the past 9 years, people across the globe have simultaneously celebrated dance through making dances in parks, museums, street corners, schools, work places, community centers, offices, and just about anywhere you can imagine. Anyone can participate. Anywhere.

Theidea is to not only blur the line between art practice and art, b...

How to Grow A Dance Audience

It’s an interesting time in the dance world and today’s dancers are looking to stay afloat in a constantly shifting landscape. Some companies are folding while new companies are being born. It’s a time to think creatively on your feet and find new ways to keep audiences engaged. But how? That’s the million-dollar question. Here are few recent ways that dance companies have tried to answer that question for themselves:

New York City Ballet recently turned to Sir Paul McCartney to create music f...

Real Life Love at the Ballet

Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Giselle…. these are some of the most romantic ballets in history. This is the stuff of love come to life on stage in a sweeping pas de deux, full of grand gestures, of love lost or found. While the dancers who put their hearts and souls into these roles might look like the perfect couple onstage, those sentiments are over once the curtain goes down…

Or are they?

Lately there has been an epidemic of real-life love stories at the ballet. On-stage engagement...

Interview With Diablo Ballet’s Artistic Director Lauren Jonas

photo by Tiffany Bertolami Fong and Michael Malerba

Artistic Director and Co-FounderLauren Jonas, trained at the Marin Ballet under Maria Vegh and Margaret Swarthout, and then studied under Sally Streets. She performed with the Milwaukee Ballet, the Oakland Ballet, the Southwest Ballet, and toured the United States with the Moscow Ballet, directed by the Bolshoi Ballet’s Vaslav Gordeyev. Since Diablo Ballet’s premiere on March 10, 1994, Ms. Jonas has recruited dancers from around the world to...

Favorite Dance Firsts

January is a month of firsts. With just a few days left to this month, I thought I’d share some of my favorite and memorable dance firsts:

1. First ballet class

Although I have already admitted that I was initially a reluctant ballerina, once I got into the studio I always had fun. These were the days when there was no uniform so it was fine to show up in over-the-top girly tutus. Back then ballet meant complete creative freedom, and my favorite thing in the world was “run-run-jump”, where we w...

Stretching: When and How Much?

photo by Marcello Gambetti

Here’s a sight you are guaranteed to see before any ballet class: dancers draped across the barres, bodiesscattered on the floor in various contortions,stretching hips and hamstrings. Stretching is how dancers start their day, with no two routines the same. But are we really doing our bodies a favor or a disservice? When, how and how much do you stretch? Go too far at the wrong time and you can really injure yourself… perhaps for good.

photo by Bob Knight

I speak from...

AcroYoga Transforms Ballet: An Interview With Laura Bernasconi

Laura Rae Bernasconi and Ismael Acosta in “Nourishment”
photo by Andrew Faulkner Photography

I recently saw a dance performance that absolutely blew me away and has stuck with me ever since. This doesn’t happen often. The piece was Laura Bernasconi’s “Nourishment”, a duet she choreographed and performed with Labayen Dance/SF. The choreography was unlike anything I’d ever seen in a dance performance and I soon realized that this was because Bernasconi uses AcroYoga in the piece.

I had to find out...

How to Be Pain-Free in 2014

Pain Free?

I’m always looking for new ways to stay fit and pain free, which is often a tall order for dancers. Most of us are extremely fit, but pain free? Not so much. Chronic pain is a reality for dancers and non-dancers alike; many people suffer from back issues, beck and shoulder pain, and old injury flare-ups. In the past I’ve turned to chiropractors, massage, yoga and acupuncture but found none of them offered a permanent solution to these problems. An answer came to me while I was sitti...