Ballet

Ballet: Where Have all the Tutus Gone?

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By Glenda Rice Collins

Oklahoma City, Okla., USA – Oklahoma City Ballet’s recent Future Voices choreographic showcase world premieres responded to familiar pop music history, as well as the classics, for inspiration.

The short, dramatic works were inspired by such themes as: sudden death, Analog Form, and jukebox memories, all in contemporary mode, up-close and personal in the same studio where they rehearse – the Inasmuch Foundation Theater at their home base. –Has spare costuming created a ‘tutu dilemma?’ 

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Oklahoma City Ballet, at 50, spins ‘Future Voices’ this week at Inasmuch Theatre

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By Glenda Rice Collins

Oklahoma City, Okla., USA — Oklahoma City Ballet’s upcoming Future Voices public performances, March 17-20, 2022, will showcase inspired new work from talented young choreographers, “up close” in the 190-seat Inasmuch Foundation Theater at the Susan E. Brackett Dance Center, the company’s architecturally-noteworthy Classen Blvd. headquarters.

The showcased new works provide a transitional program in which to reflect on recent contemporary ballet premieres, current company progress, and preparations to contrast and celebrate a few iconic classics soon across Oklahoma this spring. —A Unique Opportunity for Choreographic Study continues! Continue reading →

Courting Death: From Lorca’s Blood Wedding drama to Mills’ Romeo & Juliet ballet

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By Glenda Rice Collins      (Updated 2-20-20)

Oklahoma City, Okla. USA — From the recent production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Spanish classic, Blood Wedding, at the University of Oklahoma (OU) arts district in Norman –(see a related 2-13-20 article, Renegades…, on this website) –to last weekend’s Oklahoma City Ballet staging of William Shakespeare’s tragic Romeo & Juliet love story at Civic Center Music Hall, reminders loom forth of the fragility of life, and how frequently death is courted as the permanent solution to a temporary situation. Continue reading →

Dance in 2020: Consider the Culture; The medium is the massage

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By Glenda Rice Collins, Updated 1-3-20

Bartlesville, Okla., USA — As media and culture analyst, author Marshall McLuhan said decades ago, “The medium is the massage…it does something to people. It takes hold of them. It rubs them off, it massages them and bumps them around, chiropractically, as it were…The poet, the artist, the sleuth – whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely “well-adjusted,” he cannot go along with currents and trends…There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”  Continue reading →

Review: Tulsa Ballet Dazzles with Strictly Gershwin U.S. Premiere & More

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By Glenda Rice Collins     Updated 2-14-18  

TULSA, Okla.  USA — This past weekend’s North American premiere of Derek Deane’s Strictly Gershwin ballet extravaganza, presented by Tulsa Ballet, proved to be a fitting and well-received  homage to the genius and versatility of  American composer George Gershwin and the staying-power of his music.    Continue reading →

‘The Garden’ ballet premieres at OU to music by professor Michael Lee

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News from the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts

NORMAN, Okla., USA–The University of Oklahoma Schools of Dance and Music will present, in collaboration,  the world premiere of The Garden, at 8 p.m. March 9 in Sharp Concert Hall of Catlett Music Center, 500 W. Boyd St., on the OU Norman campus. This special event is complimentary to the public.   Continue reading →

Review: Tulsa Ballet world premiere brings hi-tech aura to ‘OZ’ themes

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By Glenda Rice Collins

TULSA, Okla. USA–The world premiere of Edwaard Liang’s glittering Dorothy and the Prince of Oz ballet last week brought Broadway theatrics to the staging of sophisticated ballet with contemporary choreography extraordinaire. Liang’s masterful authority over details  presided  during  the February 10 debut at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.     Continue reading →

Tulsa Ballet world premiere takes flight this weekend

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TULSA, Okla. USA–The world premiere of celebrated American choreographer Edwaard Liang‘s Dorothy and the Prince of Oz debuts this weekend, February 10-12, 2017 at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, as the distinguished, internationally-acclaimed Tulsa Ballet continues the celebration of its 2016-17 Diamond Anniversary season.   Continue reading →

Russian ballet in Oklahoma: cultural synergy celebrated in ‘Don Quixote’

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By Glenda Rice Collins   (Updated 2-7-17)

Part I of a two-part focus: celebrating the synergy of cultural diversity in the arts*

EDMOND, Okla. — The excitement, brilliance and buoyancy of Mikhail Baryshnikov‘s fast-paced 1983 staging of the Don Quixote ballet (after Marius Petipa) was brought to life again last week by the touring  dancers of the Russian National Ballet Theatre, featured  at the opulent  Armstrong Auditorium — a  stunning reminder of the artistic (and personal) merits of embracing cultural diversity and global travel. Continue reading →

Oklahoma Osage Ballet Santa Fe Bound

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By Glenda Rice Collins, Arts Columnist

BARTLESVILLE, Okla. USA — “I love making beautiful things,” says Osage Ballet director Randy Tinker Smith, “Whether in music or ballet, …getting everybody to work together to produce a beautiful piece of art…That’s our goal, that we always represent our tribe well, …and to keep getting our story out.”  Continue reading →