How do you spell burlesque?

The Globe covers the strip spelling bee phenomenon. Pshaw. Just another Saturday night home alone at my place.

A slightly more cerebral variant on burlesque, Tjia’s Strip Spelling Bee began in Montreal in March of last year. Although it attracted immediate attention, Tjia says it took a few attempts to “work in the kinks” and tweak the pacing. After its Buddies debut last week, Strip Spelling Bee joins Slowdance Night on the list of events that he has successfully imported to Toronto.

“I didn’t expect that so many participants would get completely naked,” says Tjia, a medical illustrator and graphic novelist who enjoys creating quirky events for quirky hipsters in his spare time. Contestants get to decide if they want to keep their underwear on or not, and a strict no-booing policy and ban on audience photography help to generate a safe and inclusive atmosphere

The future of the media

The Star has figured out how to save newspapers from their death spirals: instructional dance videos! Here’s Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” broken down. I’m shaking my booty in celebration right now.

And so it begins

Ballet B.C. lays off its entire company.

The news was given to staff at a meeting later yesterday afternoon in Vancouver, where they were told the current season was postponed until further notice.

“Everybody has gone, from top to bottom,” said dancer Connor Gnam. “It was the biggest shock of my life.”

Mr. Gnam’s brother, James was also a dancer in the company. “It’s much worse for him,” said Mr. Gnam. “He has a one-year-old-child and provides the family income.”

A number of the company are from overseas and could potentially lose their visas.

Montreal dancer wins $50,000 prize

Margie Gillis has won the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts.

The prize, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, recognizes career achievement by Canadian performing artists.

Montreal-based Gillis is in her 35th year as a solo dancer. She also is a prominent choreographer and works with other dance companies, such as Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, the National Ballet of Canada, Ballet British Columbia, Momix and the Bruce Wood Dance Company.

But she is best known for her solo dance performances, which have been acclaimed throughout the world. In 1979, she was the first modern dancer to perform in China.

She has created more than 80 dances in her career, choreographing her own work.

“I create dance poems, [crystallizations], condensations, essences … like holding a sparrow in your hand … small but clear in its heart,” she says on her website. “It is like spilling water … abundant with life.”

Here’s a video interview with her:

“I’m a caustic, difficult person and I made myself unemployable”

The Globe interviews James Kudelka about resigning as artistic director from the National Ballet and his new business of making bread.

James Kudelka stunned the dance community when he stepped down as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada in 2005, two years before his contract officially ended, to become resident choreographer. His bowing out was particularly surprising because the Toronto company was about to take up residence in the glittering new ballet-opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.

What followed was a deafening silence. He created no new works. His position at the National came to an end without fanfare in 2007. And Kudelka then slipped under the radar. The result was a complete break with the company that had been his spiritual home for much of his dance career.

He would like this chapter to be fully behind him – but in a revealing interview last week, he held forth on what (and who) propelled his rupture with the National, how his own mercurial personality worked against him, and how he is working to build a new career that involves dance and – wait for it – baking bread.

Where do dancers go when they retire?

The Dancer Transition Resource Centre, of course.

Life is short; a dancer’s life on stage is much shorter.

Dancers may continue to perform in some capacity into their 40s and even 50s, but in general, and especially for those in ballet, you reach your prime just a few years before your body tells you it’s time to quit.

Injuries can hasten retirement, as a worn-out knee did for Geon van der Wyst, former principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada. But there is such a thing as a fulfilling life after dance, as van der Wyst and thousands of other dancers found, with help from the Dancer Transition Resource Centre.

The Toronto-based centre assists professionals in the arts when they can no longer perform and have to find a new career.

Stardance author finally gets chance to stage zero-G dance

B.C. writer and dancer Jeanne Robinson, who co-wrote Stardance with husband Spider Robinson many years ago, is finally getting the chance to bring dance to space. Well, close to space anyway.

Dancer and choreographer Jeanne Robinson will complete a decades-old dream by staging a zero-gravity dance with the stars on Sunday.

Slated to be the first zero-gravity dancer in NASA’s civilian-in-space program, Robinson’s chance of a lifetime vanished when the program was scrubbed after the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986.

Now, she gets to try it again — albeit closer to Earth, in a specially equipped jet that will let her experience weightlessness for 30 seconds at a time —and film the experience for a planned movie.

Manga inspires new dance show

Not one dance article today but two! The CBC reports that a dance show based on manga is opening in Vancouver.

Manga, the Japanese comic book style characterized by wide-eyed characters and action-packed, epic storylines, has now become an inspiration for dance.

French-born choreographer Serge Bennathan, formerly artistic director of Toronto’s Dancemakers, has created a dance for two called Manga that opens in Vancouver Thursday.

Dancers Susie Burpee and Linnea Swan will try to capture the sense of story-telling and continuous movement found in manga in their 60-minute duet.

Here’s the Danceworks site.

Is there a Vancouver dance aesthetic?

A number of my loyal readers have asked for more dance links, so here’s one: The Straight looks at the Dance in Vancouver showcase.

The event’s curator, Stephen White, seems reluctant to offer a definitive opinion when reached in wintry Alberta, where he’s visiting family. He shuffles around the question, refers to the three dance professionals he’s bringing in to address the issue at a panel discussion, and quickly shifts focus to the programming itself.

Later on, however, he throws out one provocative suggestion: dance in Vancouver probably lacks any kind of shared aesthetic, but it just might be defined by economic deprivation. Starved by provincial funding rates that rank below those of cultural hotbeds Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island, local choreographers must find innovative ways to solve production problems that just need an infusion of cash.

“This sounds like I’m going to be a proponent for lack of funding, but one thing that has really coloured the development of dance in B.C. is the lack of provincial support,” White says. “I don’t mean to be political; I’m just talking about an aesthetic sense that has demanded that artists be more creative with the few dollars that they have.

“The negative impact is that few dance companies are able to give their pieces the production values that they should have,” he continues. “The positive has been that they’ve been very inventive, and I think that our dance is more ‘dance-y’, whereas Montreal dance, for instance, has a tendency to be more conceptual.”