Tagged: dance

If you’re used to only seeing the Louisville Ballet dance in Whitney Hall or the Brown Theatre, the upcoming Choreographers' Showcase is a chance to see the company in a whole new light as it premieres new work in its intimate, informal studio on East Main Street.

Twelve new pieces choreographed by members of the dance company will make their debuts. Choreographers' Showcase runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with performances at 8 p.m. Space in the studio is limited, so advance ticket purchase is recommended (call the Ballet box office at 583-2623).

Vicco, Ky., brought national attention to the state this week by becoming the smallest town in the United States to pass a fairness law. Like many of you (we're guessing), we'd never even heard of Vicco until the news broke. So we invited Fairness Campaign director Chris Hartman to join us this week and tell us more. 

"It's about three and a half hours east," Chris explains, "and several hundred feet up."

Hartman and others from the Fairness Coalition worked directly with Vicco leaders on the law. He said folks in Vicco are what we might call "non-traditional allies" who may not fit our idea of what LGBTQ-rights supporters are.

"But that may just be because we all have some inappropriate stereotypes about what rural Americans are like, about what Appalachian folks are like, and about what people who live in coal country are like," Hartman said.

On our audio diary series The Big Break, two of our artists stretch their artistic muscles in rehearsal this week. Louisville Ballet trainee Claire Horrocks finds the most difficult work in her upcoming Choreographer Showcase is a contemporary dance, because she has focused so intently on ballet movements since she started college. Actors Theatre of Louisville apprentice Samantha Beach takes to the air in rehearsals for the Humana Festival apprentice showcase "Sleep Rock Thy Brain," a collection of one-act plays that all feature flying—as in, strap the actors into harnesses, hoist them high and let them act in mid-air—as a metaphor for sleep. 

“The Nutcracker,” a fantasy-fueled story of a young girl who dreams her toy prince to life and follows him through magical lands, debuted as a ballet in St. Petersburg in the late 19th century with choreography by the ballet master Petipa and music by Tchaikovsky. But it didn’t become an American holiday tradition until after World War II, when George Balanchine staged his version for the New York City Ballet and the ballet caught fire as a Christmastime production.