Olafur Eliasson is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing some of his large-scale and ongoing projects, including his work on the ballet adaptation of the Jonathan Safran Foer work Tree of Codes in Manchester.  “On stage will be a mirror, and it will reflect the room. It’s a stretch to say that it puts the audience on the stage,” says Eliasson.  “However, they will be conscious of being visible there. But anyway, let’s see how it works.” (more…)

Yinka Shonibare MBE, Ballet God (Apollo) (2015)

Currently on view at James Cohan Gallery is Yinka Shonibare MBE’s new body of work, including exuberant, playful sculptures along with digital prints.  The UK-based Nigerian-born artist came into recognition with his hybrid sculptures, utilizing Dutch wax fabric, a textile material of complex patterns and tight allusions to colonialism due to its long, bureaucratic history of trade.  In his recent exhibition, Shonibare weighs on a broader issue compared to his familiar themes of colonialism, political supremacy and racial identity, looking at global climate changes and growing effects of these permutations throughout the world. (more…)

The New York City Ballet has noted a marked uptick in young attendees in recent years, an indication that their efforts and commissions, like Dustin Yellin’s current project with the institution, are seeing successful returns.  “We had a hypothesis that there might be a crossover interest between the visual arts and dance, particularly the kind of repertoire that we have — which have an abstract and contemporary feeling,” Katherine E. Brown, the company’s executive director said. (more…)

The New York City Ballet has announced its newest artist collaboration, this year partnering with Dustin Yellin to create a large-scale installation featuring a set of “3,000-pound glass sculptures.”  “I was moved thinking about these young, 25-year-old dancers [who are] full of life,” Yellin says, “and that they’re on their toes for all these hours.” (more…)

Artist Shirin Neshat has ventured into the field of choreography, planning an an interpretation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest alongside Polish choreographer Krzysztof Pastor for the Dutch National Ballet.  The dance will feature Pastor’s choreography alongside video footage captured by Neshat.  “We shot most of the film in Holland and now we’re watching the rehearsals and carefully going back between the dancers and the editing room,” she says. (more…)

Artist Ryan McNamara has been awarded the second edition of the Marshall McLaren Award at Performa 13.  MEÆŽM: A Story Ballet About the Internet, was performed at the Connelly Theater this November, and won the honor of the fair’s most “innovative new work.” McNamara joins inaugural winner Ragnar Kjartansson for his work Bliss. (more…)

Boléro, a collaboration between artist Marina Abramovic and Belgian choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet, is set to open tonight in Paris.  Interpreting Ravel’s immediately recognizable work for dance, the work debuts at the Palais Garnier alongside Maurice Béjart’s “Firebird” and versions of “Afternoon of a Faun” by Nijinsky and Jerome Robbins.  “In my own work I am completely in control, but the interesting thing with collaboration is to give up part of yourself, the ‘I,’ ” said Abramovic. “It’s very liberating to be in a new field, dance, to let things come to you and not to make decisions.” (more…)