The project is called "Involuntary Dances" and some British epilepsy-advocacy groups are pissed, saying the stunt/dance/whatever trivializes the condition.

I'm only surprised choreographers haven't stepped up to argue that dubbing a seizure "dance" trivializes the art form.

But Boal also slid in some poppier work—Jerome Robbins's West Side Story Suite, which condenses the musical into a one-act ballet with a little singing—and some firecracker new work.

He brought back Mopey, the spastic solo to C.P.E. Bach and the Cramps, which has become an audience favorite since Boal introduced it in during his first season (at the time, it was considered a crazily radical addition). And Petite Mort by Jiri Kylian, a dance for six men, six women, and six fencing foils (dance rarely looks good on video, but to give you some flavor of the thing):

Because it's a work night for the ballet, tonight's Genius Party won't be overrun by dancers. (At least not in the beginning. But once the pointe shoes and makeup comes off, who knows what'll happen? Maybe you'll get to buy a drink for a seven-foot-tall professional dancer.)

Read all about Boal, PNB, and why we gave a Genius Award to such a giant organization here.

During their 28-year directorship, Stowell and Russell built PNB into a nationally renowned stronghold for classical dance training and the works of Russian ballet giant George Balanchine, who collaborated extensively with Igor Stravinsky, became the leading choreographer of the 20th century, and founded New York City Ballet. PNB earned the respect of the classical ballet world as a kind of NYCB-West. But conservatism set in, with Stowell and Russell only adding a few new works to the repertoire each year.

Between 2000 and 2004, only 10 new dances appeared in the repertoire, two of them by Stowell. In four seasons, Boal has added 52, none by him, and many that stretch the definition of ballet.

One of those pieces was One Flat Thing, reproduced by William Forsythe. (Again, video can't really capture the mood, but click to around 6:20 or 9:10 to get a little flavor.)

Also from PNB's Genius profile:

One Flat Thing, reproduced, by Forsythe, inspired scores of walkouts when it premiered in March of 2008. Not coincidentally, it was the most thrilling piece PNB has staged in years. "We have a deliberate pattern of pushing the envelope and then pulling it back to something more familiar," Boal says. "But with that piece, people felt pushed too far, too quickly."

Performed by 14 dancers on and around 20 gray aluminum tables, Thing sounded like rumbling static and looked like a fit. The dancers (dressed in bright American Apparel colors) slid along and under the tables, jumped over and onto them, briefly locked limbs in furious but mechanical couplings, then disengaged. The dance was cold and glittering, with a medicinal aftertaste. As the bright bodies streaked through the gray grid, shoving the tables back and forth as they went, they looked like a riot of metastasizing cancer cells or a pack of cocaine molecules skipping through the brain. It was hard on the dancers, who suffered nicks and bruises. It was also a hell of a lot of fun.

Seattle is learning to love weird new dance like Mopey and Thing because Boal has given us a taste for it—he's also breathed new life into the organization and found the Holy Grail: the attention of newer, younger audiences.

I hope other Seattle institutions due for new leadership—the Rep, the symphony, the opera—are paying attention.

The original baby-baby-dancing-to-Beyonce YouTube video is here. Thanks to Slog tipper Rob for directing our attention to the adult-baby version.

Turns out I am a liar. A commenter pointed it out to me yesterday:

• There is hair, there is kiss, this is Stowell's, I am sorry.

Hold on a minute, Jen. Have you ever seen Kent Stowell's Romeo and Juliet? Juliet has a whole lot of hair flowing (remember Patricia Barker?), there IS kissing, and during the bedroom pas, there's a lengthy downstage-left full-length feel.
on September 29, 2009 at 3:20 PM

Wondering about this, I asked PNB's spokesman, Gary Tucker, and he confirmed that, indeed, there is hair, kissing, and at least some feel-copping. He even provided photographic evidence.

Well, now I feel sheepish. I saw Stowell's version (just once), but I honestly don't remember any of those. I recall very little heat, in fact. (Regulars who can compare both, am I misremembering?)

On the particulars, alas, I am a liar. I'm sorry. I suppose and hope that my main point stands: that Maillot's Roméo et Juliette is unprecedentedly hot for this story on this stage—and not by a little but by a lot.

Genius Cake Day. Today, four artists and one institution will win Genius Awards—one in film, one in literature, one in theater, one in visual art, and one arts organization. (See winners from previous years here.)

All morning, The Stranger's arts editors have been ambushing artists in cafes and offices, handing them cakes that read "You're a Frickin' Genius." Some have laughed, some have cried, some have sat in stunned silence.

It's been fun.

We hand out Genius Awards—$5,000, a big party at the Moore, a long and glowing profile of the artist—for many reasons: Sometimes we reward lifetime achievement. Sometimes we reward potential. Sometimes we reward big institutions. Sometimes we reward tiny, low-to-the-ground guerrilla groups. Sometimes we reward people who need the money. Sometimes we reward people who don't.

We're capricious that way.

This year's winner for institution is Pacific Northwest Ballet.

When PNB was looking for a new artistic director a few years ago, it made a genius move by hiring Peter Boal—an artist instead of an administrator, someone connected to the new work happening in New York and beyond. Boal has breathed new life into the city's ballet.

As I wrote in a review of PNB's homage to Jerome Robbins:

Since 1977, when Kent Stowell and Francia Russell took over, PNB has been an outpost for the Balanchine legacy, a kind of NYCB West. But Stowell and Russell virtually ignored Jerome Robbins, performing only two of his ballets in 28 years.

Since Peter Boal took over PNB in 2005, he has staged four Robbins ballets and will add two more ("West Side Story Suite" and the famous "Dances at a Gathering") to the repertoire next season. Boal has been gently prodding PNB out of its fustiness with more modern choreographers and sexy print ads. All Robbins is a welcome coup from that admirable campaign, introducing Seattle to the other—more populist and comical, but no less important—genius of New York City Ballet.

Kent Stowell and Francia Russell worked hard to bring Seattle a reputable ballet. But Boal and his staff have kick-started their legacy into PNB 2.0.

Boal has kept the old Balanchine favorites in the repertoire, but has imported new, sexy, and vital choreographers into the building: William Forsythe, Marco Goecke, and Benjamin Millipied. Boal has replaced Kent Stowell's Romeo and Juliet with Jean-Christophe Maillot's steamy Roméo et Juliette. (See Jen Graves's review here.) These days, PNB is on fire—and big Seattle arts institutions who are due for new leadership in the next few years should follow the ballet's lead. (I'm looking at you symphony, opera, and Seattle Rep.)

We burst into a development meeting Boal was having in his office this morning. "Oh my," he said, beaming. "We love The Stranger. The staff will be so excited to hear about this."

"Well," he said to his meeting as we walked out the door, "this day is starting off well."

Ballet was created to deter the disruptiveness of bodies. It is about control, mastery, and form, and it is awesome and reassuring. It does not moan. So what do you get in most of the 80 ballet versions of Romeo and Juliet? Teenagers with no hormones. Nobody copping a feel. No kissing—no way. Love is a Platonic thing that is impressive and repressive and wears its hair in a bun. It's nothing to do with sex.

That's the Romeo and Juliet that Pacific Northwest Ballet audiences had been watching for 21 years, choreographed by former co-artistic director Kent Stowell (to the Tchaikovsky score). But there is a new chestnut in town, introduced only 18 months ago and now brought back already—thanks to popular demand—by the choice of Peter Boal, who took over the company in 2005.

This Romeo and Juliet is Roméo et Juliette (to Prokofiev's score), choreographed in the mid-90s by Frenchman Jean-Christophe Maillot of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. ... It seduces the audience with everything the dancers have, not just some of it—their command and their release; their Olympian ability not just to spin bolt upright but also to ache; their fingers, eyes, mouths; their acting. Feels are copped. Making out is not symbolized: it occurs.

On PNB's site, you can watch a few video snippets from R&J, but none of them really captures the raw hormonal sexiness that happens onstage. For that you'll have to go to the production, which continues this Thursday to Sunday.

(Note: If you have a date planned for anytime this weekend, and you don't go to this ballet, you are truly dumb. This is incredibly prime date material.)

Looking around at videos of Maillot's other choreography, I found this extended kiss. It's not as hot as the balcony scene in Roméo et Juliette, but ... wow.

The most complete video of Maillot's R&J that I could find—still, it definitely must be seen in the flesh—is here.

Furthermore, PNB principal dancer Olivier Wevers (who plays the awesome Friar Laurence in R&J) has just today announced the launch of his own company featuring, among other dancers, Roméo (the luscious Lucien Postlewaite).

The ostensible mission: to blow the minds of the judges (Pat Graney the choreographer, Joyce Taylor the TV person, and me) with a reproduction of/riff off Beyoncé's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)."

The actual mission: To raise money for Velocity Dance Center (which won the first Stranger Genius Award for organization back in 1812).

Grand prize: $300.

Mistress of Ceremonies: Indigo Blue.

Time: 9 pm to 1 am.

Go. You won't regret it. More here.

Oh. My. God. I gotta go lay down. More clips from Skatetown USA (1979)—Scott Baio! Ruth Buzzi! Billy Barty! Flip Wilson! Marsha Brady! Horshack! The Unknown Comic!—after the jump.

(Double RIP.)

Fact #1: We will spend the rest of our lives looking at Beyoncé, a self-made superstar of the first (or at least second) order. Fact #2: The video for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)"—black-and-white, dance-packed, meticulously delivered—may stand forever as the woman's greatest work. From the flowing back and forth between Broadway dazzle and sex-drenched street moves to the gloriously odd off-key buzzing that swells under what would otherwise be a mercilessly repetitive chorus, the song-and-video combo makes for an endlessly watchable classic. Underlying everything—the shocking bursts of athleticism, the gold-star precision of the execution—is the fact that Beyoncé is a glamorous zillionaire who never needs to lift a leg again if she doesn't want to. But as a self-made superstar of the first (or at least second) order, she lives to please and dazzle and thrill us.

On Saturday, September 19, you and your co-dancers and -dependents will have a chance to win $300 for your best interpretation of the "Single Ladies" video.

The event is a benefit for Velocity Dance Center (one of the first winners of the Stranger Genius Award) and the renovations for its new home on Capitol Hill. It will happen at the Century Ballroom.

I am one of the judges.

My esteemed colleagues (choreographic genius Pat Graney, KING 5 TV anchor Joyce Taylor, and hostess Miss Indigo Blue) might be looking for athletic precision, energy, fidelity to the choreography.

Me? I want to be surprised. Show me something I'm not expecting, something that will make the audience spontaneously howl with delight, and I'll fight my hardest to make sure you get the bucks and the glory. (And I reserve the right to change my criterion at any time.)

For more information, see here.

You've got 11 days and counting. Waxie Moon, in the poster, is already winning.

The original video, for reference and inspiration, is below the jump.

They do it at Pike Place Market...

They do it at Kerry Park...

Watch the footage HERE.

Jessie Smith is a tough young bird.

Between her theater company Implied Violence and her dance company Dead Bird Movement, the very small twentysomething dancer has been flung, dropped, spit at, slapped, and held underwater—sometimes by her own hands.

Smith's dances, which she typically performs solo, have the muscle and pacing of heavy metal: savage thrashing interspersed with grindingly slow balances and precarious postures. Her Double Feature, playing above a pottery warehouse next to the train tracks in Sodo, begins with a dance film shot in Berlin. To an eerie score by Jherek Bischoff, Smith wanders around in an orange tutu, making little leaps on a crowded train platform, through some industrial rubble (barefoot), in the dark on a spray-painted sofa. She presses her butt against a warehouse wall and leans forward, curving her spine, caving her chest, and twisting her arms gracefully inward.

This is Smith's signature posture. She turns her small and willowy body into a scaly bird claw, or a curved, leafless branch in winter. It's a kind of self-effacement, a young limber body making itself gnarled and cold. The camera jiggles as she lifts one leg and, for just an instant, we can see scabs and blood on the tops of her feet.

The second half of Double Feature, in the flesh, is even tougher. In a small, spare room with 12 fluorescent poles, Smith and drummer Jeffrey Mitchell perform a fearsome duet. He pounds the toms and cymbals, filling the room with a wash of percussive noise, panting loudly in the occasional breaks. Smith rocks and jumps, twisting her bird-claw arms and pivoting violently on the balls of her feet. The drums go silent, and she slowly folds herself into a runner's starting posture, walks around the floor on her knees, and flings herself up and around. The drums begin again.

Panting, Smith hauls a table with an unopened bottle of Maker's Mark and five shot glasses into the center of the stage. She lines up the glasses and pours five shots, drinking the first two quickly. The third goes down with more effort and coughing. She stares at the other two slack-jawed and panting, like an exhausted boxer. Smith holds her hand over her mouth to keep the fourth shot in. The fifth she swallows, then immediately vomits back up through her fingers. She looks pissed. The audience winces and leans forward at the same time.

The rest of the dance is slower, Smith executing difficult balance postures, struggling against her own drunkenness. She lifts one leg slowly, painfully in the air, her lips curled in a determined snarl, her eyes rolling back in her head. It's an ode to effort, to self-limitation, to being one's own worst enemy. She thrashes some more, then collapses. The drummer stops, walks onto the stage, and drags Smith out of the room. The audience claps and murmurs.

A young, crusty punk dude says to no one in particular: "That was hardcore."

Dead Bird Double Feature plays tomorrow night. Details here.

On July 31, Kanye stopped by Why Won't You Let Me Be Be Great!!! at PS 122, a performance-art tribute to 808s & Heartbreak by Neal Medlyn and Brendan Kennedy. But superfreak Ann Liv Young apparently stole the show.

Kanye is sitting third row center, wearing a purple jacket and a barfy expression.

(NSFW.)

Thanks to Slog tipper Lane.

Cunningham was one of the lions of modern dance. He turned his back on the Graham/Balanchine legacy, and—along with Jerome Robbins and Paul Taylor—helped mold dance into a major contemporary art form.

Cunningham was born in Centralia and attended Cornish College of the Arts, where he met and fell in love with John Cage.

After seeing him dance, Martha Graham invited Cunningham to New York. He eventually rejected Graham's style (too fusty), quit her company, and formed his own—a major moment in dance history. Along with Cage, Cunningham collaborated with Warhol, Nauman, Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, and many others.

He died at 90 and hadn't danced in a long time. But those who saw him haven't forgotten. From the NYT:

He had also been a nonpareil dancer. The British ballet teacher Richard Glasstone maintains that the three greatest dancers he ever saw were Fred Astaire, Margot Fonteyn and Mr. Cunningham. He was American modern dance’s equivalent of Nijinsky: the long neck, the animal intensity, the amazing leap. In old age, when he could no longer jump and when his feet were gnarled with arthritis, he remained a rivetingly dramatic performer, capable of many moods.

... until 1989, when he reached the age of 70, he appeared in every single performance given by his company, Merce Cunningham Dance Company; in 1999, at 80, though frail and holding onto a barre, he danced a duet with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the New York State Theater. And in 2009, even after observing his 90th birthday with the world premiere of the 90-minute “Nearly Ninety,” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music he went on choreographing for his dancers, telling people as they went to say farewell to him that he was still creating dances in his head.

He kept choreographing until the end. And may have been the only 80-year-old in history to perform a duet with Baryshnikov.

RIP, Merce. (And, as the first commenter noted, to Pina Bausch who died a few weeks ago.)

Photo from merce.org.

4Culture just gave Velocity $125,000 which, according to a Velocity press release, "represents a large portion of Velocity’s overall capital campaign and was the largest single award made in this cycle of 4Culture's Cultural Facilities program."

So, you know, yay.

The themes are small-scale tragedy, but the dance is both comical and thrilling to watch. It begins with a man and his two women, playing mannequins—he's trying to keep them upright, setting one and running to prop up the other while the first falls. It's a vaudeville routine, using women as inanimate objects, that had the audience laughing at the visual jokes and gasping at the muscles required for a human being to really, actually, be as rigid as a doll.

It got better from there.

From the (very short) preview for Construct:

Last August, young choreographer Tanja Liedtke had a case of insomnia. She got up for a 2:00 a.m. walk around her neighborhood in Sydney, Australia, and was struck by a garbage truck. She died alone. Construct, her final work, is a North American premiere and may be your only chance to see Liedtke's choreography. A vigorous piece for three dancers with a score by DJ TR!P, Construct is a critically celebrated—and apparently funny—piece about a love triangle and the relationship between making a performance and making a home.

And here's a very short video of Liedtke dancing (the solo) in 2003's Cost of Living with DV8:

Get tickets if you can. Unlike many OtB shows, Construct is not having a Sunday performance. Apologies for my moronism.

I will post this video as many times as it takes for the world to understand that Zac Efron is a comedy genius. Watching him prance around was the only reason I was interested in seeing that Footloose thing.

(Thanks to my high school pals Sri and Nick.)

Continue after the jump if you hated this video and want to complain about it in comments....

Today, the Boston Globe pays them and their touring show—the devil you know is better than the devil you don't—enthusiastic compliments.

Given its Boston premiere over the weekend by the Seattle-based husband and wife team and their company, it is unapologetically confounding, yet insidiously memorable, like a crazy dream you just can't shake. At the center of it all, there's a furious little heart that pumps equal parts vitriol and grace.

As the other dancers enter the fray, Scofield's thorough grounding in ballet shows, not just in steps - elegant leaps and arabesques, pointed articulate feet - but in the formal clarity of ensemble movement in vivid, coherent patterns. But Scofield also draws from modern dance, Butoh, even yoga, juxtaposing luxurious stretches and graceful spins with flat-footed walks and a repeated march-like rocking in deep plie. The corps leaps like gazelles then skitters on all fours like monkeys. A playful trio dissolves, leaving one dancer manically twitching. Energy shifts on a dime.

Read the whole thing here (and The Stranger's profile of Scofield and the devil here).

The dying swan solo from Swan Lake"Le Cygne" from Camille Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, courtesy of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo—the drag homage/satire of fusty, old-time Russian ballet.

Read the Guardian's profile of the company—they started as a two-weekend whim in 1974—here.

Last week brought the tale of the drunk who attacked some members of a Russian ballet in a hotel lobby for, you know, talkin' Russian and bein' faggy and stuff.

Now a bunch of pro-Palestinians are protesting the arrival of Tel Aviv's Batsheva Dance Company, founded by Martha Graham and Baroness Batsheva De Rothschild and led by superstar choreographer Ohad Naharin. (Batsheva comes to the Paramount every couple of years or so.)

Bruce Nestor, head of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, is leading the charge:

"It has nothing to do with the content, but we're asking people to boycott because of the funding they receive and because of the policies of the state of Israel," Nestor said. His letter specifically mentioned the recent Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip.

So besides being one of the world's best choreographers, is Naharin some kind of baby-eating, pro-war freak?

Not according to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel:

To what degree, then, has Ohad Naharin — Israel's most internationally visible dance artist and thus arguably the least vulnerable to destructive backlash — done this? I've been monitoring Naharin's statements for more than two years now, both here on the Dance Insider and in other publications, and while he's been willing to criticize his country, he doesn't volunteer it; you have to ask. ...when pressed, he's used a term as strong as 'war crimes' but without any specificity.

This is asinine and counterproductive.

First, he's a choreographer so—sorry choreographers—who cares what he thinks?

Second, he's a choreographer who criticizes Israel and condemns its "war crimes," just not loudly and frequently enough in the pages of Dance Insider magazine.

Third, he receives funding to make art from a government that uses other funding to do bad things. And that's unlike American artists—those who are lucky enough to get funding—exactly how?

What the fuck, head of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild?

Ohad Naharin is your foie gras.

Photo of Batsheva ripped off from some blog that probably ripped it off from some other blog.

The 28-year-old man is accused of launching verbal and physical attacks that targeted not only Russians, but blacks and gay people. Five people were hurt, according to a police report.

The man threw punches and slapped people, injuring two men and a ballerina from the troupe, in town to perform "Sleeping Beauty" at Northrop Auditorium.

In other Minnesota news:

A self-described "vampyre" and former fringe political candidate faces charges for threatening a teenage girl who tried to break off their relationship by telling him she was actually a vampire hunter.

Land of 10,000 weirdos.

Via Towleroad.