Conversations on Dance

Today we are joined by Houston Ballet Principal Dancer, Connor Walsh. Born in Fairfax, Virginia, Connor began his training at the age of seven under the direction of his mother Constance Walsh. He has trained at The Kirov Academy of Ballet, The Harid Conservatory, and Houston Ballet’s Ben Stevenson Academy. In 2004, Walsh joined Houston Ballet’s company as a member of the corps de ballet. He was q...

This week on Conversations on Dance, we are joined by New York City Ballet dancer Preston Chamblee. Preston hails from North Carolina, where he began his dance training. After dancing at the School of American Ballet, Preston was accepted into the New York City Ballet and shortly after began to dance featured roles in ballets like ‘Morgen', ‘Rodeo' and ‘Year of the Rabbit'. Prest...

This week we are joined from the 2019 Vail Dance Festival by Julian MacKay, first soloist at the Mikhailovsky Theatre.  Born in Montana, he quickly discovered his passion for ballet as a young boy, moving to Russia to train at just 11 years old.  He went on to train at the Moscow State Ballet Academy for six years, graduating top of his class. He danced for 8 months at the Royal Ballet before retu...

This week it's just Rebecca and Michael.  We sit down to go through the responses from our listener survey.  We talk about some of the statistics that came to light from our questionnaire, go through some of the guest requests, talk about the ins and outs of creating the podcast, and go through your feed back.  If you have not yet taken our survey, it's not too late: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r...

This week we are joined by Christine Shevchenko, Principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre.   Christine was born in Ukraine, where she was chosen to train in rhythmic gymnastics and ballet at an Olympic school.   At eight years of age, she moved with her family to the United States where she trained for nine years at Pennsylvania Ballet’s Rock School.   In 2003, Christine became the youngest r...

This week we are joined by Yumiko Takeshima, founder of dance wear company, Yumiko.   Yumiko began dancing at the age of four in Sapporo Japan.   At the age of 14, she moved to San Francisco to study at San Francisco Ballet School.   Yumiko went on to dance with various companies, before ultimately ending up at Dutch National Ballet where she danced for over a decade.   While at Dutch National, ou...

It's just Rebecca and Michael this week, breaking down everything that happened surrounding Lara Spencer's comments on Prince George studying ballet on Good Morning America.  We are guessing that this story may have made it on your radar over the past few days, but we are here to break down the dance community's reaction, why it was important, and how Good Morning America reacted on Monday morning...

Today we are bringing you a live podcast recording from the Vail Dance Festival with New York City Ballet Principal Dancer Lauren Lovette.   We catch up on what she has been up to since we saw her last summer, talk about her choreography, and her position of Artist in Residence this year at the festival.   Unfortunately, we again had a technology glitch during this episode and are bringing you an...

Today we are bringing you a live podcast recording from the Vail Dance Festival with Jookin superstar, Lil Buck.   Charles “Lil Buck” Riley is an dancer, actor and model from Memphis, Tennessee who specializes in a style of street dance called jookin. He gained popularity after director Spike Jonze used his cell phone to record an interpretive performance of “ The Dying Swan ” by Lil Buck and Yo-Y...

Today we are bringing you a live podcast recording from the Vail Dance Festival with Festival Artistic Director Damian Woetzel and Janet Eilber, Martha Graham Dance Company Artistic Director.   The pair talks with us about the Graham legacy, their roles as artistic directors of their respective organizations, and what audiences can expect to see from the Martha Graham Dance Company this year in Va...

Today we are bringing you a live podcast recording from the Vail Dance Festival with New York City Ballet Principal Tiler Peck. In her 11th year at the Vail Dance Festival, Tiler continues to explore her work as a choreographer with a revival of last year's premiere ‘Lincoln Square' and new premiere to Caroline Shaw's ‘Thousandth Orange'. We talk to her about her choreographic inspirat...

Today we sit down with choreographer Pam Tanowitz from the Vail Dance Festival.  We spoke with Pam from a Live event at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center in episode 140 and today we get to chat with her about her new creation for Vail.  This is a small excerpt of a longer conversation on her work that we will be publishing in the coming weeks.  In this bonus episode, Pam gives us some insight into he...

New York City Ballet up-and-coming corps member, Roman Mejia, sits down with us from the Vail Dance Festival.  We talk about his year of dance since we last saw him in Vail, working with Edward Villella, and on performing Alexei Ratmansky's ‘Fandango' here at Vail Dance Festival on August 2nd, 2019. This episode is brought to you by Yumiko  and the Town of Vail.  This episode was recorded at...

American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer, Herman Cornejo, sits down with us from the Vail Dance Festival.  We talk about his year of dance since we last saw him in Vail, his 20th anniversary with ABT, and about what he is dancing this year at the festival.  You will want to listen to the end where he shares some BIG news with us! This episode is brought to you by Yumiko and the Town of Vail. The p...

Today we are bringing you a live podcast recording from the Vail Dance Festival on the Vail premiere of “The Little Prince.”   We are joined by choreographer, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and BalletX dancer who dances the title role in the peice, Roderick Phifer.   This episode was recorded on July 29th, 2019, one day before the ballet will hit the stage here in Vail on   the evening of July 30th. Tune i...

Today we are brining you a live podcast recording from the Vail Dance Festival with American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer, James Whiteside.   This episode was recorded on July 27th, the morning before the premier of his newest work, “New American Dream.”   Unfortunately, we did come up against some technical difficulties, so we are sharing this episode from a backup file, with a little lower qu...

This week we have the pleasure of diving into one of the works that will be presented this year at the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival, Agnes De Mille’s ‘The Other.'  We speak with dancers Stephen Hanna (formerly of NYCB) and Abi Stafford (Principal at NYCB) who will be performing this work at the festival. We are also joined by Diana Gonzalez-Duclert, who is setting the ballet on Stephen and Abi....

It's just Rebecca and Michael this week on the pod.  We talk about looking forward to this year's Vail Dance Festival, our 3 year anniversary, what Michael has been up to, and we answer your questions from social media. This episode is brought to you by Yumiko (yumiko.com.) The post (144) Rebecca and Michael: Catching Up & Vail Dance Festival Preview appeared first on tendusunderapalmtree.com...

This week we are joined by Christin Hanna and Constantine Baecher of the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival.   Christin and Constantine met twenty years ago as students at American Ballet Theater. Constantine's career as both choreographer and dancer has led him to the Hamburg Ballet School, Royal Danish Ballet and Compagnie de Carolyn Carlson amongst others as well as co-founding his own company Cross Con...

This week we are joined by Tyler Angle, Principal Dancer with New York City Ballet and Artistic Director of the Nantucket Atheneum Dance Festival. Tyler Angle was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and began his dance training at the age of nine at the Allegheny Ballet Company. He entered the School of American Ballet full-time in the fall of 2001. In the fall of 2003, Mr. Angle became an apprentice w...

This week we are joined by Monica Stephenson, Associate Head of School at The Washington School of Ballet SE Campus.  Monica is originally from Fayetteville, North Carolina. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and the Professional Training Program at the Houston Ballet Academy. In 2002, she received her first professional contract with The Washington Ballet. Sh...

Today’s episode was recorded live at The Kennedy Center on Saturday June 1, 2019 before the matinee performance of Miami City Ballet as a part of Ballet Across America. We were joined by Virginia Johnson, the Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem (who had been performing earlier in the week), Lourdes Lopez, Artistic Director of Miami City Ballet, and celebrated choreographer, Pam Tanowitz....

This week, through the magic of Skype, Rebecca talks with Michael and friend of the pod, Zoe Zien, who are in Hong Kong setting Justin Peck's “Year of the Rabbit” for Hong Kong Ballet. Michael and Rebecca danced with Zoe at Miami City Ballet for the majority of her 13 years with the company.  Listen to our full episode with Zoe about her career and training in episode 58 .  Today, Michael and Zoe...

This week we are joined by Tegan Rich, a dancer with Festival Ballet Providence, who is currently recovering from a full rupture of her achilles tendon.  Originally from Stuart, Florida she began her training at the Dance Academy of Stuart and as a teenager, she later moved to Miami to train with the Miami City Ballet School.  When she was 19, she went on to join Festival Ballet Providence in Prov...

Today we are joined by Jodie Gates, vice dean and director of the University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance.  Ms. Gates was a celebrated principal dancer with the Joffrey Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, and Pennsylvania Ballet, as well as a principal guest artist with several companies around the world. She was a muse for celebrated choreographer Robert Joffrey and has worked wi...