People And Companies In The News

Dance Magazine, July, 2000

PITTSBURGH BALLET principal dancers Ying Li and Jiaban Pan have taped a segment for the PBS children's show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. The segment (#1758) features the couple, who are married to each other, chatting with Rogers and dancing an excerpt from Giselle; Marianna Tcherkassky makes a special guest appearance.

It airs August 30 on most public broadcasting affiliates ... This year's Guggenheim Fellows in Dance included choreographers Sara Shelton Mann, Brenda Way, Ronald K. Brown, and Darla Villani, and Dance Studies candidates John Storm Roberts and Amanda Vaill, all of whom were chosen for their "distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment." Fellowships include a monetary award ... Mikhail Baryshnikov (along with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and author E.L. Doctorow, among others), was honored with a PNC Financial Services Group Commonwealth Award this spring; each winner received a $250,000 prize for outstanding achievement ... The Ford Foundation has developed New Directions/ New Donors, which will provide one-time challenge grants of $1-2.5 million each to twenty-eight arts organizations with creative programs; dance winners included Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ballet Memphis, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and San Francisco Ballet ... Seventeen dancers from Senegal's Ballet d'Afrique Noire left the company's U.S. tour before it was over; the dancers disappeared after a Berkeley performance in April. The missing dancers and company managers were unavailable for comment, although Bay Area acquaintances told the San Francisco Chronicle that the dancers may have left over a pay dispute. Jane Hermann, of New York agency ICM Artists Ltd., which booked the tour, said, "We pay a flat fee to the company--how it's distributed is not up to us." She said she was unaware of a pay dispute ... D. David Brown, most recently the executive director of Boston Ballet, has been named executive director of Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet, effective as of May 2000 ... Choreographer Mark Dendy won this year's $50,000 CalArts/Alpert Award in dance, given to "early mid-career" artists ... The 1999 Irvine Fellowships in Dance went to Remy Charlip, Joanna Haigood, Jacques Heim, Alonzo King, Wendy Rogers, David Rousseve and Linda Sohl-Donnell--each received a $30,000 grant ... Ten-time Tony Award-nominee Graciela Daniele, the dancer/choreographer behind Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You and the recent Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun, received a Jazz Festival Artists Excellence Award in May ... Kentucky's Louisville Ballet bid farewell to principal dancer David Goud, soloist Robin Irwin, and corps de ballet dancer Jena Sager Baldridge, who retired at the end of the 1999-2000 season ... Pennsylvania Ballet promoted soloist Martha Chamberlain to principal dancer mid-season after Chamberlain, who was understudying the role of Juliet in the company's spring production of Romeo and Juliet, took over from an injured dancer with just a week's notice ... Coleen Davis, a principal soloist with the Dutch National Ballet, retired May 5 after a twenty-two-year career with the company ... Utah's Ballet West was honored for its accomplishments and contributions to the state's artistic community at the Eleventh Annual Governor's Awards Gala ... This year's Living Treasure in American Dance Award, conferred by the Oklahoma City University, went to Leonard Reed, inventor of the tap-dance move the "shim sham shimmy" ... The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has awarded a three-year, $6 million grant to the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts ... Teenage dancers Jennifer Whalen, Jeremy Tatum, Jamie Brianne Dee and Jeffrey Williams were winners at the Spotlight Awards for young artists, held this spring in Los Angeles ... Yoshiko Chuma, director of the New York-based company School of Hard Knocks, has been named artistic director of Ireland's Daghdha Dance Company ... Teen dancers Sarah Stolz, Marisol Cabrera, Austin McCormick, Megan Roup, Bonnie Crotzer and Katie Young were winners at this spring's Sixth Annual Ballet Competition of Santa Barbara ... Purchase College dance/choreography student Kyle Gregory Abraham has received the 2000 Thayer Fellowship in the Arts. The $7,000 award is given to young arts graduates of the State University of New York to establish professional careers.