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亚特兰大报纸AJC和亚特兰大官方芭蕾舞博克（Atlanta Ballet Official Blog）同时报道了亚特兰大芭蕾舞团特邀华人芭蕾舞大师魏东升加盟国际著名的编舞家詹姆斯•库德拉的The Four Seasons演出的消息。
亚特兰大官方芭蕾舞博克:
http://atlantaballetblog.com/201 ... rm-in-four-seasons/
AJC多次报道并盛赞亚特兰大芭蕾舞团The Four Seasons演出，AJC记者Howard Pousner 专程到APDA舞校采访了魏东升先生并撰文Whatever happened to ... Atlanta Ballet star Wei Dongsheng， 发表在AJC Monday October 17 2011上，这是文章的电子版：
Wei Dongsheng, the popular Atlanta Ballet dancer who retired in 2004 at age 38, doesn’t feel he’s getting older. But as he prepares to return to the company where he was an audience favorite for 14 years, he notes that the dancers with whom he’s sharing the rehearsal studio sure seem to be getting younger.
Now 45, Dongsheng will portray a harbinger of death in “The Four Seasons,” as part of the Atlanta Ballet’s season-opening performances Friday through SundayOct. 21-22 at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
Dongsheng, though, is filled with life, still in top condition as the result of running the Atlanta Professional Dance School in Johns Creek that he founded with his wife, Jenny Chen, in 2000.
“The dancing, movement part is really not a challenge at all,” he said in his still-strong accent. “The movement to be with the company, I think, that is the most treasure for me. I really enjoy every single minute.”
Appreciated for his flawless technique and commanding presence before his retirement, Dongsheng has kept those honed through his work at Atlanta Professional Dance School, which teaches classical ballet to 250 students from 4 to Adults.
“When I teach, I don’t like to sit down and just talk and use my hands,” he said. “I love to be physical. I have to use my body to explain things. I think that helps me keep in shape.”
Dongsheng sometimes takes a class at his school taught by another teacher, but doesn’t otherwise have a workout routine. He credits his good form to the strict training he received as a young student at the Beijing Dance Academy from 13 to 20 years old.
During his years at Atlanta Ballet, where he started as a company member in 1991 with tremendous dance knowledge but no English, the 6-foot-fall dancer never weighed more than 150 pounds. Today, he’s at a sleek 148.
At his annual checkups, he’s routinely told he needs to gain weight.
“I say, ‘This is my weight!’” he recounted with a laugh. But he said the message has started to worry him a bit. “The nurse told me if I got sick, I have nothing to burn.”
So he eats ice cream every night after a late dinner, a habit that goes back to his professional days when many dancers ate after 10 p.m. whether they were performing that night or not.
But Dongsheng said as much as he loved that life, he didn’t look back after he retired — in part because he had no choice but to look forward.
“It was up to point that I had to retire, because my wife couldn’t continue to run the school by herself,” he explained. “That was the good thing: I right away started to help, and she said, ‘You do this, you do that…’ It was really intense.”
He said it’s highly rewarding to help bring up a new generation of classical ballet artists at his school, which is 90 percent Asian, a majority of the students Chinese, but also including Caucasians, African-Americans, Latinos and Jamaicans. He has taken many of them to China on yearly educational tours, and, through his parent company the T.M. Culture & Arts Center, has hosted students from the National Ballet of China School.
Visa problems have made that latter kind of exchange more difficult in recent years, to his frustration. “Humans made these national things to stop the art,” Dongsheng said. “Basically I think the earth is an international village. Everybody has their own culture, and we need to go to go view what our neighbors’ culture is and exchange things.”
At the moment, he’s focused on the chance to mix it up again with Atlanta Ballet dancers, where he is also a guest instructor at its Centre for Dance Education.
James Kudelka’s “The Four Seasons” marks his second performance with the troupe since his retirement, the last one coming in February when he danced the role of King Florestan XXIV, father of Princess Aurora, in “The Sleeping Beauty.” He was asked to return in part because it marked the final starring role of his long-ago partner, Kristine Necessary Loveless, who was retiring at 28 to pursue her master’s on her way to becoming an elementary school teacher.
“Wei was a mentor all the way through,” Loveless recalled. “He just has this presence. Literally when he would walk on stage, you couldn’t help but look at him, even by just walking. Something about him, your eye was immediately drawn to him. Always perfect technique. So disciplined about everything.”
Loveless will be one of many with fond memories in the Cobb Energy audience this weekend watching Dongsheng under the spotlight once again. |
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匿名
发表于 2011-10-27 13:34:18
发表于 2011-10-27 13:29:11
