THE DANCE MAGAZINE WITH ATTITUDE

Issue 9 – February 2024

Turn up your speakers and click the instruments

THE DANCE MAGAZINE WITH ATTITUDE

Issue 9 – February 2024

HEAR THE DANCE

Illustration by Kingsley Nebechi for Dance Gazette. Animation by Adam Marshall

Issue 9 – February 2024

My great comfort when I was very small was a musical clock. In the shape of an orange windmill, with bright yellow spars, it played the tragic theme from Swan Lake. It seems a bit random now – why a windmill? why Swan Lake? – but that melancholy tinkle of Tchaikovsky helped lull tiny me to sleep and wound itself forever around my memory. Only years later did I realise that the little clock introduced me to one of the most famous pieces of all ballet music.

features

Dance Gazette Top 40

Music and dance are intimately linked. Sanjoy Roy explores this essential relationship, and we share the Dance Gazette Top 40 – music for movement ranging through place, time and style.

features

Inside the music

Dancers are often praised for musicality – but what does that mean? Lyndsey Winship asks dancers, musicians and coaches at The Fonteyn.

features

Scene Change

Ballet classics can contain beloved dance and music – but also outdated cultural stereotypes. Can we reimagine them? Phil Chan offers a sound solution to problematic music.

reports

Think fig

Ballet, music and more are on the syllabus at the Fig Club in Erbil, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Bekir Aydoğan visits the only RAD-registered school in Iraq.

reports

Swan songs

The RAD’s Silver Swans programme brings older students to ballet classes. As the RAD launches the next stage of the programme, Emily May meets dancers in Germany and the UK.

interviews

Fight the power

Celebrating 50 years of hip hop, expert voices – including the rapper Ice T – talk dance, relevance and sneakers.

interviews

Music matters

Dancers and singers live and breathe music. In this special audio feature, we visit the Royal Opera House in London to ask a leading soprano and principal ballerina about working with music, and how it feels to perform to a mighty score.

SHORT READS Issue 9 – February 2024

Big Picture

50 episodes of Why Dance Matters

Olga Smirnova marks 50 episodes of the RAD podcast, writes David Jays.


Dance Gazette

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Inside RAD

Power in Motion

Darcey Bussell helps launch the RAD’s new leadership training programme.


Dance Gazette

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RAD Q&A

Holly Pooley

Australian teacher Holly Pooley describes the appeal of the Rambert Grades syllabus – and why RAD teachers should explore it.


Dance Gazette

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Advice Bureau

Germaine Acogny

Short but sweet advice from the mother of contemporary African dance.


Dance Gazette

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Why Dance Matters

Jakob Wheway Hughes

Meet the gold medallist at The Fonteyn 2023.


Dance Gazette

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Playlist

Jonathan Lo

Australian Ballet’s music director picks favourite tracks from Beethoven to Michael Bublé.


Dance Gazette

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