Tag Archive: Marvin Hoshino

Thank you.

August 16, 2024

George Jackson
Washington D.C., U.S.A.
August 2024

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

George Jackson, photo by courtesy of Costas © Costas CacaroukasGeorge Jackson, Washington D.C.’s renowned dance reviewer, died on August 5th at the age of ninety-two. Born in Vienna in 1931, his parents put him on a train abroad when the Nazis invaded Austria in March 1938. The family later reunited and moved to Chicago. A microbiologist specializing in parasitology, George researched and taught at the University of Chicago and New York’s Rockefeller University and for many years worked for the FDA in Washington on food safety. “I enjoyed my work as a biologist in itself and also because it sent me traveling around the world so that I saw a lot of dance that otherwise I never would have,” he once wrote to me, but, as earning a living as a dance critic was not a practical option in the U.S.A. (except during the dance boom from the 1960s to 1980s), writing was his “moonlighting and weekend occupation.” His output was enormous, ranging from dance reviews to historical pieces for U.S. and international outlets, among them The Washington Post, The Washington Star, and The Times of London. Although George officially terminated his career as a dance critic in 2012, he continued to contribute reviews to danceviewtimes.com until 2022. Yet his writing focus shifted to fiction, which he published under his birth name, Hans Georg Jakobowicz. (more…)

What Should Ballet Dramaturgy Achieve?

July 19, 2014

by Horst Koegler
Transcribed from a lecture given in 1976 at the Noverre Society in Stuttgart.
Stuttgart, Germany

June 29, 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Ilona Landgraf

1) Horst Koegler, ca. 1976, photo Gert WeigeltHad anyone asked John Cranko what ballet dramaturgy is, I imagine he might have answered, “Ballet dramaturgy is the figment of a frustrated German ballet critic’s imagination, and that person is Horst Koegler.” I have no illusions whatsoever about my persistent demand for more ballet dramaturgy. I dwell on it in order to correct an intolerable situation that puts ballet at a disadvantage compared to drama and opera.

Because the term ballet dramaturgy didn’t exist in the past and ballet got along without it, some people today do not see the need for it. Although I can understand this attitude histori- cally, I don’t agree. Theater dramaturgy has existed ever since Aristotle’s Poetics, which spelled out the rules for comedy and tragedy. We also know what Gotthold Lessing’s Hamburg Dramaturgy accomplished for the German theater. Opera dramaturgy is less explicitly fixed and, despite the Florentine Camerata’s erudite debates on the topic, never produced globally accepted standards. (more…)

Summer Ballet Copenhagen

May 15, 2014

“The Picture of Dorian Gray”, “The Elephant Man”
Bellevue Theater
Copenhagen, Denmark
August 17, 2013

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2013 by Ilona Landgraf

1. Jiří Bubeníček, The Picture of Dorian Gray by J.Bubeníček, photo Costin RaduEnchanting beauty and monstrous ugliness – both extremes were united in “Summer Ballet 2013” at the Bellevue Theater in Klampenborg, a suburb of Copenhagen. The handsome Dorian Gray, striving after eternal youth in choreography by Jiří and Otto Bubeníček, met the deformed Elephant Man, the title character in Cathy Marston’s new work.

Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, in which unscrupulous glorification of physical beauty combined with the chase after everlasting youth and ultimate pleasure ends in disaster, inspired the Czech twins Jiří and Otto Bubeníček’s modern adaptation of the subject. Both principal dancers – Otto at Hamburg Ballet and Jiří formerly in John Neumeier’s ensemble and later with Dresden Semperoper Ballet – they’ve been busy staging their own works with other companies as well as with their own troupe, Les Ballets Bubeníček. Although Jiří is usually the choreographer while Otto designs sets and costumes, sometimes also composing the music, there’s no strict division of labor, but rather a cross-fertilization. (more…)

A Life’s Voyage

March 29, 2013

Christina Gallea-Roy
“Here Today – Gone Tomorrow, A Life in Dance”
338 pages, b/w and color illustrations
Book Guild Publishing 2012
ISBN: 978-1-84624-690-6

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2015 by Ilona Landgraf

1. Here Today-Gone Tomorrow, book coverThey met each other by coincidence at a rehearsal in Germany of the American Festival Ballet before a tour to Spain: Alexander Roy, who had performed his first ballet steps in bombed-out Magdeburg, Germany, and Sydney-born Australian Christina Gallea. What started as a collaborative dance career at the end of the 1950s grew into a lifelong artistic and personal partnership. They ran their own company and were successful worldwide.
Lady Fortune was surely by their side.

Christina Gallea Roy’s memories of the hurly-burly decades on the international dance scene are recalled in her book, “Here Today – Gone Tomorrow, A Life in Dance”, an engaging, worthwhile read. An instigator for it was the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is actively interested in documenting independent dance companies.
Based in London, the couple toured around the world with International Ballet Caravan, which in 1973 was renamed Alexander Roy Ballet Theatre. They appeared in East and West Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Malta, Southeast-Asia, North and South America, and once even in Bombay. (more…)