Many of today’s versatile competitive dancers can highlight a choreographic phrase with a thrilling tumbling pass, kip-up, or aerial. But when it comes to acrobatics in competition routines, there’s a fine line between a captivating performance and a highlight reel of tricks. Finding the sweet spot between demonstrating a dancer’s skill and entertaining an audience—and the judges—is key.

Audiences love big, stage-filling choreography with dramatic music and luscious dancing. But every once in a while, a short, spare dance packs a punch. And that’s what people remember when they walk out of the theater.

For Deaf audiences, watching performances with traditional sign language interpretation can feel like watching a tennis match: Their focus has to toggle between whatever is happening onstage and the interpreter, often off to the side, who might be communicating what the music sounds like or what’s being said. That’s if the performance even has an interpreter, which all too often is not the case.

For choreographers, the name of the game is, frequently, collaboration: with dancers, with designers, with composers. But what about the choreographers who find artistic soulmates, making long-term collaboration central to how they create work? That kind of partnership can transcend disciplines, decades, and dynamic approaches, leading to a distinctly exciting kind of art-making.

The weaving together of movement and language into art seems natural and inevitable, given ballet’s long history as a narrative art form, and our current cultural infatuation with visual storytelling as a means of communication. Yet choreographers’ interest in tying ballet directly to literature is a notable turnaround from the 20th century’s Balanchine-influenced rise of abstract, plotless ballets.

Most students major in dance seeking rigorous training and career-focused knowledge to succeed in the professional world. But the team at Marymount Manhattan College doesn’t just help students land their dream dance job—they give them the tools to create it. With a degree program unmatched in its flexibility, dance students at Marymount can craft a course of […]

Marc Happel and Miriam Miller on the history of NYCB’s Fall Fashion Gala and how the book New York City Ballet: Choreography & Couture was created.

Many dancers struggle when they have to learn fast. How can you train your brain to pick up choreography quickly?