When West Side Story landed on Broadway in 1957, it had been a long time coming. Director-choreographer Jerome Robbins, writer Arthur Laurents and composer Leonard Bernstein toyed with collaborating on a contemporary musical loosely based on Romeo and Juliet for years, picking up and putting down the project multiple times as other creative endeavors demanded […]

The technique developed by the legendary Luigi has become inextricable from jazz dance. But it was born from a career that almost never was: In 1946, at 21, the dancer was left comatose and partially paralyzed in the wake of a car accident, two months to the day after his discharge from the U.S. Navy. […]

On March 29, 1958, a question of rights to a particular ballet led to an illegal duel between a choreographer and an impresario. When then–Paris Opéra Ballet director Serge Lifar demanded that the International Ballet withdraw his Noir et Blanc from its program, the company’s impresario, Jorge de Cuevas (better known as the Marquis de […]

In June 1955, just months after meeting during the Broadway run of House of Flowers, Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder tied the knot. It was the start of one of dance’s longest, most celebrated on- and offstage partnerships, which lasted until Holder passed away in 2014. “She is the most beautiful woman in my […]

On January 17, 1920, one of American ballet’s most celebrated dance actresses was born. Nora Kaye’s father was an actor who’d worked under Konstantin Stanislavski; her earliest ballet teacher was Ballets Russes choreographer Michel Fokine. (“He was more interested in creating roles than in teaching class,” she recalled in the February 1965 issue of Dance […]

In the November 1954 issue of Dance Magazine, we shared excerpts from an autobiographical essay written by Galina Ulanova. Reflecting on her memories of performing small roles as a self-professedly reluctant ballet student, she wrote, “Belief comes so easily in childhood. And what a pity it is that this belief in what is happening on […]

Paul Taylor’s Post Meridian was last performed 30 years ago, which is well before any of the company’s current dancers joined Paul Taylor Dance Company. In fact, it’s before some of the dancers were even born. Every step and extreme angle of the body in the dream-like world of the 1965 work will be fine-tuned […]

What’s better than one film about Rudolf Nureyev? Two films about Rudolf Nureyev! We’re excited to share that a feature-length documentary titled Nureyev is slated to make its North American premiere next month. Nureyev will be shown in major U.S. cities starting April 19, giving you just enough time time to brush up on your […]