The Dance Lens Podcast

Of What Is Past, or Passing, or to Come: Paul Taylor’s …Byzantium

A dance, a medieval empire, and a W.B. Yeats poem collide in one of Paul Taylor’s darkest works. Ahead of Paul Taylor Dance Company’s Lincoln Center season, Cynthia Dragoni takes a deeper look at …Byzantium (1984): where it came from, what it shows, and why it still matters.

In this episode:

A short history of Byzantium, from Greek colony to Constantinople to Istanbul, and the empire that called itself Roman

How Byzantine gold mosaics shaped artists from Gustav Klimt to Henri Matisse to W.B. Yeats

Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium,” read in full, and its dream of escaping death through art

Paul Taylor’s place in American modern dance, from Martha Graham’s company to 147 works of his own

How Taylor turned Yeats’s vision of permanence into an image of an empire’s collapse, set to the music of Edgard Varèse

What critics Anna Kisselgoff and Clive Barnes saw in the piece

See it live: Paul Taylor Dance Company at the David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, November 3–22, 2026. …Byzantium performs November 10 (7 p.m.), November 14 (8 p.m.), and November 22 (3 p.m.).Tickets HERE

Read the full essay and find more dance deep dives, interviews, reviews, and lives on The Dance Lens Substack: https://thedancelens.substack.com/

Hosted by Cynthia Dragoni.…Byzantium performs November 10 (7 p.m.), November 14 (8 p.m.), and November 22 (3 p.m.).

We continue our Monday night live series interviewing one of my shortlist favorite dancers: ABT Principal Jake Roxander. This season Roxander is playing the mercurial and beloved role of Puck, a role he could not be more suited for. We talked about the role, his family’s history in it, Ashton’s legacy as one of the main architects of British ballet and why becoming a principal changed less than he expected.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did and if you’d like to join us for our upcoming lives, make sure you subscribe below.

Dance Lens Substack: https://thedancelens.substack.com/

You probably don’t associate the words dance and defiant feminist resistance with Afghanistan. But as we shall see, history lives in the body, carried through gestures, rhythms, and traditions passed from one generation to the next.

Join me for a conversation with Samia Karimi, an Afghan dance artist who immigrated to the United States as a child. Through her work Karimi is helping preserve a rich artistic heritage while giving it new life.

Afghan dance is a rich collection of regional forms shaped by centuries of cultural exchange. The country’s position at the crossroads of Central Asia, Persia and the Indian subcontinent is reflected in its dance traditions, from intricate footwork and expressive gestures of the hands and wrists to the communal energy of Attan, the circular group dance widely recognized as Afghanistan’s national dance. In Karimi’s words, Afghan dance has its own “swag”—a distinctive physical language through which its history and identity are carried in the body.

Decades of war and, more recently, the Taliban’s restrictions on women and the arts have shaped the way much of the world sees the country. But so much is lost in that picture: an ancient cultural heritage, a vibrant artistic vocabulary and the courage and creativity of so many Afghan women.

Resources:

* Sahar Education

* Afghan Literacy Foundation

* Mobile Mini Circus for Children

* Samia’s Instagram

Want more interviews, reviews, deep dives and lives? Join us on Dance Lens Substack: https://thedancelens.substack.com/

Get to know ABT Principal Dancer SunMi Park:

Fresh from her promotion to principal at American Ballet Theatre, Park explores a different side of her artistry in Kylián’s Petite Mort.

SunMi Park has risen fast at American Ballet Theatre. She joined the Studio Company in 2019 and entered the corps de ballet in 2022. Seven months later she was a soloist, and at the end of last season she was promoted to principal. Artistic director Susan Jaffe announced the promotion onstage after only Park’s second Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, with her mother, visiting from Korea, in the audience. Park had told herself not to expect it. Then, during the final bows, she heard the audience scream and turned to see Jaffe walking toward her.

Park says the work hasn’t changed much from rank to rank: rehearse, work hard. What has changed is what she wants the audience to see. “I’m trying to show the audience who I am.”

This fall, that includes Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, made in 1991 for the Salzburg Festival to mark 200 years since Mozart’s death. It’s set to the slow movements of Piano Concertos No. 23 and No. 21 and danced barefoot by six men, six women and six fencing foils.

Park trained in the Vaganova method at Korea National University of the Arts. She describes Kylián’s movement as “very soft. Very sensitive,” built on touch rather than extremes. Her own instinct is sharp and classical. In rehearsal, stager Elke Schepers, who was in the original 1991 cast, kept giving her the same note: “This ballet have to be really calm. Just breathe. Trust a partner. Always being together.”

Her tip for first-timers is to watch the opening. Before any music, the men balance the foils on a single finger, and all you hear is the swish of the blades. Behind them, the women wait. “I can’t even breathe,” Park says of those moments before the curtain goes up.

Her first Petite Mort comes just before her debut in the lead of Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial. That role asks for a “queen vibe” against heavy music, with movement that stays light and fast. She’ll go from bare feet to pointe shoes in a matter of days.

Park also talks about adapting to ABT’s mix of styles, including her first encounter with jazz. She names the roles she’s dreaming of (Juliet, Manon, Onegin), and a lightning round settles Odette versus Odile.

Park’s fall season also includes the ABT company premiere of Helen Pickett’s Petal and the world premiere of corps de ballet member Brady Farrar’s Trio Élégiaque on October 28.

ABT’s fall season runs October 21–31 at the David H. Koch Theater. TICKETS HERE

Dear Reader,

We tend to think of ballet as an art form whose history belongs to another era. And yet many of the artists—the masters—who shaped the ballet we recognize today were working within living memory, and some of their direct artistic descendants are still teaching, coaching and staging.

Today I’m sharing with you a conversation I had with Diana Byer, whose contribution to ballet spans more than four decades of company building, education and preservation. Her place in dance history also runs through her training with Margaret Craske, the dancer and teacher whom Enrico Cecchetti himself recognized for her ability to teach and transmit his principles, style and syllabus.

Who was Cecchetti, you ask?

Cecchetti was born on June 21, 1850, in a Rome theater dressing room, the son of two dancers. He became a star across Europe, and in 1887 he joined the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. There he created the Bluebird and the wicked fairy Carabosse in Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. He went on to teach at the Imperial Ballet School and trained Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In 1918 he opened a school in London, and in 1925 he took over La Scala’s ballet school in Milan. He taught until the day before he died, on November 13, 1928.

He trained the stars who defined ballet in the early 20th century. Here’s an incomplete list of his famous students: Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Preobrajenska, Alicia Markova and Serge Lifar. He also left behind the Cecchetti method, a structured system of training that has directly and indirectly influenced every school in the world.

This pithiest of biographies gives you a sense of how massively impactful he was in ballet’s development. And his student Margaret Craske—Diana Byer’s teacher and mentor—was one he thought most able to pass on his artistic and technical principles.

In our conversation, we talk about Byer’s training, the company she built, and what it means to carry the weighty tradition forward.

Enjoy, and please let us know if you have any questions.

Warmest,

Cynthia

Diana Byer

Diana founded New York Theatre Ballet and its school, leading the company as artistic director for forty-four years. Dance Magazine called it “a miniature American treasure.” Under her leadership, the company became known for intimate theatrical productions and carefully researched restorations of classic works, often bringing back the original dancers and designers to help recreate them.

Before founding the company, Byer danced with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Manhattan Festival Ballet, New York City Opera and the Juilliard Ensemble. Alongside her work in Cecchetti’s tradition, she studied with Tudor and later became a répétiteur for the Antony Tudor Trust, staging works by Tudor and Agnes de Mille for American Ballet Theatre and other companies.

Byer also founded LIFT, a program offering homeless and at-risk children in New York City dance classes, performance opportunities and scholarships. Her work with LIFT received citations from President George Bush, First Lady Hillary Clinton and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her story is the subject of the documentary LIFT, featured at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.

In 2023, she received the Martha Hill Dance Fund Lifetime Achievement Award. Byer stepped down as artistic director of New York Theatre Ballet in 2022, and she has since launched Teaching Cecchetti, an online educational channel devoted to lesser-known steps and teaching methods passed down to her through Margaret Craske.

Below is a lightly edited interview, listen to the full conversation in the podcast above.

The Dance Lens with Cynthia Dragoni is a reader supported publication. To join us for live talks, events, and subscriber only posts, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Cynthia: You were a soloist with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Manhattan Festival Ballet, New York City Opera and the Juilliard Ensemble. Why did you decide to start your own company and school instead of continuing to perform with other companies? And was there a particular turning point when you decided to do that?

Diana: Not really a turning point. I felt strongly that Margaret Craske’s work—her way of teaching, her aesthetic—should live, and I wanted to make that happen.

I also wanted to keep dancing, and to dance work that I loved, which I wasn’t getting to do. I was dancing and I adored it, but I wanted to do Tudor and Ashton and de Mille, and find new choreographers who were of interest. But the main reason was to keep Margaret Craske’s way of working alive.

Diana Byer

Cynthia: What did you want New York Theatre Ballet to be about when you founded it?

Diana: The world didn’t need another American Ballet Theatre or New York City Ballet. They were first-class companies. I wanted to create something smaller and intimate, where the audience was almost a part of it because they were so close. Low ticket prices and, again, the rep.

Cynthia: What were the biggest practical challenges in the early years?

Diana: I had stars in my eyes. I had no idea of the amount of work it would take. And it was 1978. Being a woman trying to start a company, and not being a world-renowned star, made it really difficult. But it was something I wanted to do. I believed it was needed, and then you just do it. I made lots of mistakes in the beginning. I kind of learned as I went.

Cynthia: Was there a challenge you weren’t expecting that comes to mind, in reflection?

Diana: Scheduling dancers, when I was not able to pay a living salary in the beginning. I could later, but scheduling was always hard. I always wanted live music, especially for the repertory. And I didn’t know about getting the rights, learning all those things: rights, royalties, fundraising. It was a learning curve for many years. But that whole time, I have to say, it was glorious, even though it was so much work.

Cynthia: I believe it. The dancers who are starting their own projects today are having the same struggles. I think it would be so cool if dance education included a yearly class on, say, the difference between a nonprofit and a C corp.

Diana: Right.

Cynthia: You’ve staged Agnes de Mille’s dances from Carousel, Oklahoma! and Brigadoon, as well as Three Virgins and a Devil. What do dancers today find most difficult about her work?

Diana: I first want to say that whenever I stage those, I stage them with Elena Zahlmann. We’re a team when we stage those ballets. I think the hardest thing is being a person on stage. As far as I know, it’s not done in the classroom with most instructors. They don’t teach dancers how to do a gesture as a human, without putting anything on top of it, without commenting. That’s really hard when it’s never been gone over in the classroom.

Margaret Craske always started that in the children’s classes. They learned how to do a human gesture, and a gesture that went out to the audience, or drew the audience into your world. And the eyes: how the eyes work on stage, how they have to be bright, and how sometimes you have to pull the eyes back. That’s not taught so much anymore, and it’s really difficult. The steps are easy.

Margaret Craske and Diana Byer

Cynthia: For anybody in the audience who’s not a dance person, what do you mean by doing a gesture without commenting on it? What does that mean for a layperson?

Diana: That’s a good question. I’m going to give a quote from Tudor, which I won’t get exactly right. He wanted to work with people who happen to dance, not dancers who try to be people. Does that make sense? That gesture is human. When you offer a hand to someone, it’s a human gesture. You’re not going to lift the chest and stick your chin out. It’s just a gesture to say hello. Say, in Lilac Garden, when she’s with the man she must marry and she offers her hand. It’s just human. It’s not danced.

Cynthia: Right, like without artifice.

Diana: Right.

Cynthia: How does the Dance Notation Bureau help with restaging?

Diana: I think it’s a wonderful organization. You …

At Finnish National Ballet, under artistic director Javier Torres, Nayara Lopes was painted white to play Cupid.

It was February. Lopes, now a principal dancer with Philadelphia Ballet, had joined the Finnish company as a first soloist last season and was preparing for the iconic role in Don Quixote when she sat down in the makeup chair and found white makeup being applied to her face and body. It was not the first time. Eighteen years earlier in Brazil, before her first international competition, a teacher had asked to paint her skin white. Lopes went on to dance professionally with National Ballet of Canada and Dance Theatre of Harlem before joining Philadelphia Ballet, where she was promoted to principal dancer in 2021. In this conversation, she tells the full story—what happened in that room, what came after, and why she’s speaking up for the next generation of dancers.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Full conversation in the podcast above.

Photo: Alexander Iziliaev

CYNTHIA: What first drew you to ballet, and what was it like being a young Black girl training in Brazil at that time?

NAYARA: I didn’t necessarily want to be a dancer. I always say that. I loved to run and I loved to play football. But my sister was the one who wanted to start dancing, and I watched her dance, and I thought that they all looked so beautiful. I said, “Okay, well, that’s completely different from what I’m interested in now,” but I wanted to try. And when I tried, the teacher right away saw that I had potential, and she said, “You should really see if you have a future, because you have so much potential, and I would like to give you a scholarship.”

That’s how I started dancing, and I never stopped.

CYNTHIA: Tell us about the teacher who told you to lighten your skin before your first international competition.

NAYARA: I was doing this very important competition and I went to the finals. In my situation in Brazil—I come from poverty—that was a big deal for everyone from the school and for me, and I wanted to be able to get out of my country to be able to support my family. So I was going to do basically anything that I had to.

My teacher took me to the side and said, “I would like to paint your skin white so you can have a better chance to get a scholarship.” She said it very nicely and bluntly. She didn’t add much to it. She said, “We got two sponsors for this, and it was very hard for us to get here, so we should try to do the best so you can have the best opportunity.” At the moment, I didn’t object to it. I really, truly believed that she wanted to do that for my best. When this happens to you, you feel like something is being erased, and you’re not good as you are, and that stays with you.

CYNTHIA: Recently there’s been a big scandal, a lot of drama online, with competitions telling dancers to lose weight or be a certain kind of way. And I always think to myself: the teacher, the competition, they function as brokers. They’re middlemen taking the student into a system. So by definition they have to agree with the system or the student won’t be successful, but then nothing ever changes.

NAYARA: It’s really difficult, because in order for something to change, you need to speak up. It was 18 years ago. Back then, I do think that my teacher did this with her best intentions, because ballet is very traditional, and it’s a predominantly white art form. I’m not here saying I’m going to change the whole world. I’m just saying that just because it’s tradition doesn’t make it right. And on a human level, this stays with you, and it sends a message that you are an anomaly. You’re not good enough as you are. It’s deeper than just a color being applied to a Black dancer.

But the system is ingrained within us, and I think we need to have open conversations and really listen to what is happening to the dancers and how it is affecting them.

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CYNTHIA: You’ve said that early emotional, spiritual injury stayed with you. Can you speak about how that first moment changed the way you saw your body and your place in your industry, in your career, over the next several years?

NAYARA: Right away after I did the competition, I remember showing the photos to some of my friends, and they were in shock. They were like, “My God. Why did you look this way? You don’t look pretty.” And then I felt embarrassed and ashamed that I agreed to it. But I knew my reasons and my teacher’s reasons, so that was strong on me. And I do believe art is for everybody. That’s how I grew up. That’s in my culture. But I didn’t have the knowledge or the voice.

So when that happened to me again 18 years later, first of all I was in shock, because I didn’t understand why this issue still happened and why me speaking up wasn’t enough for them to understand how harmful that can be. It brings us again to a level where we are not good as we are, where we are again an anomaly, where to belong in the art form we must fix and change our color, our race, and you just don’t belong here naturally as you are. And that stays with you. Being a Black dancer—especially since I’m a principal dancer—it feels like the standards are really high just because you’re a Black dancer. There’s so much to carry.

Photo: Arian Molina Soca

CYNTHIA: Right, because in that position, there’s a ton of pressure. I’ve heard Misty Copeland say that when she was made principal at ABT, there was no such thing as a low pressure show for her.

NAYARA: No. The moment that you are put in those situations, you have to deliver. And if you don’t deliver for a day, that’s going to stay with you forever if you’re a Black dancer. So the pressure is high, and I don’t think people understand that. It’s because we don’t feel like we belong, so when we belong, we have to really show up without mistakes.

CYNTHIA: You moved through National Ballet of Canada, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and then Philadelphia Ballet. Can we hear a little bit about that arc?

NAYARA: I got an apprenticeship with the National Ballet of Canada, and that was my dream, to be in a big company. It was an amazing experience. Although, after two years, Karen Kain, the director at the time, said that she didn’t see me in the company because she didn’t have a soloist spot.

That was very hard for me, because I didn’t want to go back to my reality in Brazil, which was very, very harsh. So I went back to auditioning, and I went to Dance Theatre of Harlem, and they didn’t have a spot at the moment because they were just coming back, opening a new company with a few dancers. So I had to go back home and stop dancing, and that was very hard. Sometimes you’re good enough and you don’t find a job, and then when you’re not good enough, there are opportunities. It’s very, very hard to be a dancer and find your timing.

Dance Theatre of Harlem offered me a job, and that’s when I felt the most accepted in any work environment I have been in, because they really had a way of teaching us that a Black dancer has a mission, and that we do belong, and we can be different, and being different is not an obstacle. It’s an asset. It was very important to hear that and to know that, especially after all my experiences, because it felt like I was given the opportunity, but I was never really heard or cherished. After DTH, I knew my value, and I knew that it is possible, and it’s good to be different, and there is beauty in being a Black dancer. I feel like I owe DTH for that.

CYNTHIA: And then you became a principal at Philadelphia Ballet, after a Nutcracker performance in 2021. Why did you go from Philadelphia Ballet to join Finnish National Ballet at a lower rank, as a first soloist?

NAYARA: I am a workaholic, and I’m constantly challenging myself. I wanted to experience a company in Europe. I always wondered how it was to dance in Europe. So when that opp…

Students at Ballet Dance Studio UG in class with their director and teacher Dennis David Kazibwe

Dear Reader,

Dance is already a tough business, and its challenges are compounded when operating in an area without an established company or theater. And we owe a great debt to all the producers, teachers, dancers and choreographers who brought their crafts to new audiences—developing schools and companies outside of the establishment—their work created ballet’s technical richness and stylistic variety.

Ballet’s earliest roots are in the Italian, and soon thereafter, royal French courts, where it functioned as both creative outlet and sometimes artistic propaganda for the ruling class. Even today it's easy enough to associate the art form with places like Paris, St. Petersburg, New York, and London. In reality, however, ballet is not a cultural artifact but a language—one that can be spoken by anyone willing to enter its studios and its stages. And it is a language still spreading across the globe, finding new voices and new talents, and developing new styles.

But who is responsible for carrying and sharing its technique and its repertoire? For creating new ballets and developing new dancers? This formidable task falls to the teachers, coaches, and other keepers of the art form. Today I am over the moon to introduce you to my guest and friend: Dennis David Kazibwe—the founder and creative director of Ballet Dance Studio UG in Kampala, Uganda, a ballet-focused dance institution committed to developing young dancers and building world-class opportunities in East and Central Africa.

Below is our lightly edited interview. Listen to the full conversation in the podcast above.

Enjoy! And let me know what you think.

Warmly,

Cynthia

CYNTHIA: Ballet hasn’t been in Kampala for very long, as far as I understand it. When you tell someone in Kampala that you teach ballet, what is their usual reaction?

KAZIBWE: So usually when I tell someone that I actually teach ballet, they often think ballet is related to France, to Italy, to Russia. So they actually think I’m involved in an art form for rich people. I come from a very rich family and I’m well traveled, well learned. So it also gives me an opportunity to share with them and let them know that ballet is not only known for Russians, for French people, or for Italians, or for the rich community. So it gives me a chance to let them know that anyone can actually learn ballet. And ballet’s just a dance, just like you could talk about hip-hop or Latin dance.

CYNTHIA: And how do they react when you tell them that? Are people interested?

KAZIBWE: So even when I tell them that any community can take on ballet, even Africa, they’re like, “Ah, yeah, they’re rich people, of course. They’re rich people, of course.” So it gives me a chance to let them know that it can be quite pricey, but we are trying our level best to make it affordable and also attainable within our communities. And they listen to me. And by the time I usually leave, because of my passion, they actually feel like they would love to be part of it.

CYNTHIA: Great. And how would you describe what Ballet Dance Studio UG actually is right now? How many dancers, what ages, where do you teach? I mean, what studios do you use?

KAZIBWE: Ballet Dance Studio UG is a growing school. And we do not want to just be a place where children come and dance. That’s the other thing. So in my country, probably it could be in the entire Africa, most people think that ballet is done by babies.

So I don’t want it to be just a place that people think this is where children come and dance and probably express themselves. It’s a place that creates hope. It’s a place where children learn to be disciplined, to learn to be resilient. They learn different values of life. Just like if a child went to a traditional school and they learned different disciplines in terms of chemistry, biology, mathematics, this is just a different discipline, or a different place that children, even adults, can come and attain these values.

So currently we have about 30 consistent students. We start from ages three and above. So we have the petite group, which is between ages three to six, and then we have the junior group that is from seven to 12, and then we have the intermediates that is from 13 until 18, and then we also have the adults. And this year happens to be the first period that we actually got adults. By adults, I mean from ages 22 and above that are signing up to take on ballet. Yes, I feel it’s a big achievement for us this year.

Have you gotten your Nutcracker tickets yet? The delightful touring production NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet and their international cast are coming to a city near you. Find your tickets HERE . See you at the show?

CYNTHIA: I love to hear this. And where did ballet first enter your life? What is your training? What’s your background like?

KAZIBWE: TV, yes. I first heard about, or actually watched, ballet on TV, and it looks flawless. Just like Latin dancing and hip-hop and all that, because most of us, the first beat that we get to know is Michael Jackson. So I would say Michael Jackson, the first person. Then you get to see this dance that has got a lot of flexibility and all that. People are jumping over, the ladies are twirling, and they have all those tours, and you actually think they’re walking on their toes.

But over time, I have got to learn from different teachers, and I was so lucky. My very first teacher was Miss Julia Adrighetti. She studied at the Bolshoi. So she came over to Uganda, and we met, and I shared my desire and passion with her.

And she taught me the first intensive in her backyard, in the apartment where she was staying. And she said, “You look very graceful, but you’re very athletic.” So she mentioned I need to be a little more soft instead of rigid. So that was my first struggle in ballet. Then from there, I picked up from Mzansi Ballet (in South Africa, owned by Dirk Badenhorst) under the guidance of Professor Ioshi, from Cuban ballet methodology. I was even so lucky that I’ve actually had a chance to interact with Mario Gaglione from Joburg Ballet. So it’s been a beautiful experience over time. So I would say it’s been lots of teachers that I’ve been able to encounter. Talk about you yourself. I have had a chance to interact with you and get to know more about ballet from you as well. Yes.

Students in rehearsal at Ballet Dance Studio UG

CYNTHIA: The pleasure’s been all mine. In your studies, you went from seeing it on TV and seeing these phenomenal world-class dancers, and then studying with your teachers. Was there a difference between what you thought ballet was versus the experience once you’re actually in it?

KAZIBWE: So ballet on TV looks flawless. Very flawless, very easy. Very doable. It’s the simplest dance, in fact. You can do everything in your mind until they ask you to do it. And you’re like, “Oh, but she did it. She jumped like this. Why can’t I jump like that? She turned like this, but why can’t I turn like this?”

Yeah, so a lot has changed over time. You realize that it could take tons and tons of months for you to perfect just one pirouette. A lot of consistency, a lot of resiliency, a lot of understanding the dynamics of executing these different steps. That’s what I’ve discovered over time. Yes.

CYNTHIA: I think this is the same surprise that we all have when we come into it. There’s the dream and then there’s the reality of the process. Was there a moment you can point to where ballet stopped being an interest and became the thing that you were going to devote your life to?

KAZIBWE: Yeah. It is a very, very big decision. Before I decided to open up a ballet school, I used to do a lot of things. And I usually tell this story, that I was volunteering with the UNA Association in Uganda. And we had a project with my brother. So we go to an event and my brother tells me, “You know what? I think we need to do like a get-together where people c…

INTERVIEW WITH MORGAN MCEWEN:

What do advocacy, construction and the GDP have to do with the future of ballet? According to Morgan McEwen—Artistic Director and founder of MorDance—plenty.

McEwen spent nearly two decades as a professional ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera, BalletMet, Richmond Ballet. She describes how it ended this way: “Two decades as a ballerina really pushed me to my breaking point, which was starting a ballet company.” That company is MorDance, founded in 2014 while she was still dancing at the Met. It’s now a company in rapid ascent: a budget up nearly 700% in four years, a move from Manhattan to Dobbs Ferry, and $3 million in state funding, a third of that for economic development. In other words, the state sees this dance company as an investment in society’s financial health.

The arts, in addition to being the best of what humanity has to offer, are a massive economic driver. Their output is more than agriculture, more than mining, more than transportation and warehousing—according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the NEA, the arts contribute 4.2% of U.S. GDP, about on par with construction. That’s $1.17 trillion and 5.4 million jobs. Yes, you read that right.

Why all this talk of budgets and GDPs when MorDance's artistic point of view could fill a podcast of its own? Because, as McEwen puts it, "who holds the keys to the infrastructure determines whose stories are told." Join us for a conversation about what the arts are worth and what artists and arts orgs can do to make their case.

Find MorDance website HERE, Instagram HERE and tickets for the Oct 2nd Gala HERE.

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Making its New York debut this month is the dance drama Mulan, winner of the China Dance Lotus Award, the highest honor in Chinese dance.

Mulan is a sweeping, visually spectacular reimagining of one of China’s most enduring legends: a young woman who disguises herself as a man to take her father’s place on the battlefield, and rises to eternal renown. The production blends classical Chinese dance with martial arts, staged on a fifteen-meter revolving stage. It plays Lincoln Center’s Koch Theater for four performances only, September 18th through the 20th.

Today we’re speaking with two of the leads about what these characters mean to them and what it took to bring this production to life: Tang Xinyi as Mulan, and Wang Zheng as General Wei. Special thanks to our interpreter, Amber, for making this conversation possible.

Join us for the performances September 18th through the 20th, 2026 in New York City. Ticket links HERE.

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Don't forget NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet is coming to town on its national tour. You can get Dance Lens exlcusive discount tickets here

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Ballet book recommendation: The Fern Flower

As the daughter of the Tsar’s favored vodka maker, Mila has everything: wealth, status, a household devoted to her happiness. She also has a stepmother whose one ungranted wish — a child of her own — has curdled into cruelty.

Every summer on Ivan Kupala Eve, Russia searches its riverbanks and forest floors for the Fern Flower, the mythical bloom said to grant fortune, power, and the deepest desire of the heart. In all of history, only one person has ever found it—until Mila…

Mini interview with Hugo Marchand:

Composed in 1928 for dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein, Ravel’s Boléro began as an experiment: an insistent melody repeated again and again while the orchestral color and intensity gradually changes . Rather than developing in the conventional sense, Boléro builds almost entirely through repetition, rhythm, instrumentation, arriving at an eventual crescendo.

Its simplicity was provocative. It challenged expectations of what an orchestral work was supposed to do, creating something at once radically simple and deeply hypnotic. There are plenty of stories surrounding Boléro: Ravel calling it his “only masterpiece,” dismissing it as having “no music,” or responding approvingly to an audience member who called him mad. Whether these anecdotes are entirely true doesn’t really matter. They speak to the work’s paradoxical character. Ravel was a meticulous, sophisticated composer who deliberately stripped his music down to its essentials, then watched this experiment become an international sensation. Its unforgettable melody, relentless pulse, and dramatic buildup have since carried it far beyond the concert hall, from the 1984 Olympics to film, television, and major public events.

Boléro is compelling because it seems so simple. Beneath its repetition is a calculated tension between restraint and excess, order and obsession, culminating in a finale that feels inevitable—and yet is still startling.

The ballet Boléro premiered at the Paris Opera on November 22, 1928. The original choreography was by Bronislava Nijinska, with sets and scenario by Alexandre Benois. The premiere was a major success, and although Ravel’s music became more famous as a standalone orchestral work, its origins as a piece for dance remained part of its identity.

The most influential later choreographic interpretation came from Maurice Béjart, whose Boléro premiered in Brussels in 1961. Béjart radically reimagined the work. Rather than illustrating the Spanish setting of Nijinska’s original, his choreography distilled the ballet into a charged, sensual ritual, with a central dancer embodying the melody while the surrounding group embodies the relentless rhythm. The central role was later famously taken by Jorge Donn, beginning in 1979, and Béjart’s version became one of the defining choreographic interpretations of the score.

Hugo Marchand, the internationally acclaimed Paris Opera Étoile, recently performed the work as the central piece of a larger show that he curated. I had a chance to speak with him for a few brief moments before his recent performances at New York City Center. We spoke about what Boléro means to him, his approach to the work, and the state of the arts—in this case, dance—in France.

Marchand joined the Paris Opera Ballet in 2011 and was named an Étoile in 2017 at the age of 23, following a performance of La Sylphide in Tokyo, where he danced the role of James. That same year, he won the Benois de la Danse for Best Male Dancer, recognized particularly for his performance as Romeo in Rudolf Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet. He has since developed a broad repertoire spanning classical, neoclassical, and contemporary choreography, dancing the work of choreographers including George Balanchine, William Forsythe, John Cranko, Crystal Pite, and Jerome Robbins, among many others. He received a second Benois de la Danse for Best Male Dancer in 2023.