The new year is here, and that means it’s time for New Year’s resolutions, promises, and challenges to sweep across the world, and then be promptly forgotten by next month. At Fred Astaire Dance Studios, we believe in setting realistic, achievable goals that help you better yourself. To this end, we’ve compiled a short list […]
Find Your New Year’s Dance Resolution!
The new year is here, and that means it’s time for New Year’s resolutions, promises, and challenges to sweep across the world, and then be promptly forgotten by next month. At Fred Astaire Dance Studios, we believe in setting realistic, achievable goals that help you better yourself. To this end, we’ve compiled a short list […]
Begin Again: The Real Deal With Creating a Dance Reel
If you ask experts in the performance industry, they’ll tell you that one of the best ways to book work in 2022 is to post content online for casting directors and agencies to see. Even better? A dance reel that demonstrates your skill in a variety of genres. Unfortunately for me, the last legit video […]
Dance Magazine’s Top 8 Stories of 2021
With its massive ups (live shows back in theaters!) and massive downs (COVID-19 cases and supply-chain issues canceling far too many of those shows), 2021 has truly been a year like no other. Throughout it all, Dance Magazine has worked to cover the trends, the changes and the inspirations that have kept us going. Here […]
Begin Again: Dealing With a Spoonful of Setbacks
Just for today, this column is not what I planned it to be. In an unexpected (or entirely predictable, depending on when you ask me) turn of events, I am not feeling good. How did we get here? How did we go from doing so great that I pitched a comeback story to the preeminent […]
Robert Battle at Full Throttle
When you’re enjoying the easygoing, joke-telling manner of Robert Battle as the welcoming emcee of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, you might not realize there is a ferocious choreographer underneath all that charm. To celebrate his 10 years as artistic director, at New York City Center on Tuesday night the company presented seven works […]
From Billy Elliot to Bernardo: David Alvarez’s Journey to “West Side Story”
It was clear to anyone who saw David Alvarez in the musical Billy Elliot more than a decade ago that there was something remarkable about this teenager debuting on Broadway. Even at 14, he had a gravitas beyond his years. His dancing was both expressive and explosive—it said something about the character’s inner life, and […]
Op-Ed: Please Stop Weighing Dancers
On what began as an ordinary day in early fall, I and the other dancers in my pre-professional ballet program were told that we were going to be measured by the costume shop in anticipation of our upcoming Nutcracker performances with the company. We were lined up in a hallway that led to the open […]
12 Holiday Gift Ideas for Your Favorite Dancer
As rewarding as it is to see the excitement on someone’s face when they unwrap the holiday gift you’ve given them, finding that gift can be stressful. When you’re shopping for someone who spends most of their days in the studio, gift giving can feel like even more of a challenge. Whether you’re looking for […]
Heels Over Head: 5 Tips to Get More Comfortable With Inversions
“Being upside down is important to me,” says Pavan Thimmaiah. After all, an image of an upside-down dancer in a freeze is the logo for his New York City–based PMT House of Dance studio. And yet, when Thimmaiah was younger, he was so unsure about being upside down that his mother, attempting to help, would […]