YEAR IN REVIEW 1996: PERFORMING-ARTS: DANCE

DANCE: Europe. Intrigue and upheaval within Russia's two most celebrated ballet companies turned 1995 into a year dominated more by politics than by artistic achievement. In Moscow simmering feuds at the Bolshoi erupted into turmoil, with publicly voiced fears that the company was being torn apart, while in St. Petersburg a serious shortage of funds, coupled with increasing dependence on income from foreign touring, found the Mariinsky Ballet in grave trouble. At the Bolshoi autocrat Yury Grigorovich had for many of his 31 years as artistic director run an ensemble that in style and achievement was the envy of the rest of the world. Yet it was becoming apparent that he had held on to power for too long and that the company was stagnating. He and the old guard at the Bolshoi Theatre had failed to recognize the importance of sweeping reforms of perestroika, money was cripplingly short, the bureaucracy had become stifling, and the theatre itself was found to be crumbling. Battles behind the scenes broke into the public domain when the introduction of Western-style contracts for the ballet company put an end to the practice of lifetime security that had long been a perk of employment. Such was the importance to Russia of the Bolshoi that Pres. Boris Yeltsin felt compelled to intervene, and ultimately Grigorovich was left with no option but to resign. This shocked some of the dancers, who called a strike, and for the first time in the Bolshoi Ballet's 219-year history, a performance was canceled. The ringleaders--chief among them Grigorovich's wife, ballerina Natalya Bessmertnova--found themselves in serious trouble: they were fined and sacked. Vladimir Vasilyev, a former star of the Grigorovich regime who had once openly protested directorial policy, was brought in as his replacement. Vasilyev was one of the greatest male dancers of his generation and had gone on to a career as a choreographer and director; he launched his directorship of the Bolshoi with a reminder to his dancers that it was their duty to serve the audience and not to engage in political intrigue. Vasilyev promised to lead in a spirit of openness and democracy, but he warned that he might sometimes find it necessary to act as a dictator for the sake of artistic achievement. One of his first initiatives was to invite the French choreographer Maurice Bjart, renowned for modern ballets with mass appeal, to create a work for the company. Meanwhile, the Mariinsky's artistic director, Oleg Vinogradov, who acknowledged that during his 18 years in office he had made enemies, became a victim of death threats and street muggings and found himself obliged to hire a bodyguard. Furthermore, he took the unexpected step of appointing two assistants (dancers Farukh Ruzimatov and Makharbek Vaziyev) to help run the company, thereby diluting his power. Vinogradov increasingly was forced to regard foreign tours as lifelines for the financially strapped company. Nonetheless, in the autumn an important tour to the U.S. was called off at the eleventh hour, following accusations from an impresario that Vinogradov had been pocketing touring funds, and he was briefly imprisoned. He was released to continue directing the company while awaiting trial, but the Mariinsky's financial and artistic problems deepened. While the Russians' problems captivated the world's press, the year brought several less-publicized changes to company leadership. At the Paris Opra Ballet, mutual agreement was reached between the management and Patrick Dupond that he would relinquish the directorship to concentrate on his career as one of the company's star dancers. He was replaced by his administrator, Brigitte Lefvre, who had previously run the Thtre du Silence. Less than a year into a seven-year contract with the Royal Danish Ballet (RDB), Peter Schaufuss fell out with the management and departed. It was a blow to the company, which in preparation for Copenhagen's 1996 assignation as the European City of Culture had planned tours to London and Paris in 1995 to enhance its international standing. (Following Danish outrage at France's nuclear testing in the Pacific, Paris was eventually canceled.) Rifts were patched over speedily, however, Schaufuss agreeing to continue to stage certain works for the company and Johnny Eliasen appointed acting artistic director. Ironically, when in the summer the British director of the Royal Swedish Ballet, Simon Mottram, resigned, the man chosen to replace him was Frank Andersen, who in 1994 had himself been forced to hand over the reigns of the RDB to Schaufuss. The year's most carefully planned departure was that of Sir Peter Wright, director of the Birmingham (England) Royal Ballet (BRB). He retired in the summer after producing a new version of Copplia as his swan song and winning a welter of tributes from colleagues, critics, and audiences. His relocation of the then Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet to Birmingham and the five years in which he had guided the company in its new home had secured for it a strong new identity, a major achievement. Notable anniversaries in 1995 included the 35 years of the Netherlands Dance Theatre (NDT) and the 20 years during which Jiri Kylian had directed the company. Both were celebrated through Kylian's lighthearted Arcimboldo, a work that not only brought together for the first time all three NDT companies but also drew on resources of light and space never previously experienced in the company's specially built theatre in The Hague. Attention was focused in 1995 on works by leading choreographers produced by companies other than their own. Martins, the Danish-born director of NYCB, returned to the RDB to mount an evening of his ballets selected from the more than 50 works he had created for his American company. The Britisher David Bintley turned to an English monarch as inspiration for Edward II, a new work for the Stuttgart Ballet, and he produced Carmina Burana for the BRB in October, by which time he had taken up his new position as artistic director in succession to Wright. At year's end Tharp, whose choreographic reputation had been forged through her own company and her collaborations with Mikhail Baryshnikov, created her first work for Britain's Royal Ballet, a full evening to Rossini's music. Yet despite the activity of Europe's great dance institutions, it was doubtful whether 1995 brought any significant developments. Radical thinking went on, however, among the vast networks of independent and experimental work extending throughout Europe. The development of new technologies and the potential for creative application pointed toward expanding horizons, as did increasing emphasis on multicultural work. Ageism became a topic for debate. On the one hand there was increasing concern over how to extend audience expectations beyond the confines of youth and beauty (especially in ballet), and on the other a seminar in Lausanne, Switz., addressed the difficulties of helping to prepare dancers, both practically and psychologically, for second careers. British deaths during the year included two dancers from the early years of Ballet Rambert: Prudence Hyman (who went on to dance with Colonel W. de Basil's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Markova-Dolin Ballet) and Annette Chappell (who also danced in Munich, Germany, and later taught there and in Stuttgart). Travis Kemp, a celebrated dancer with the Camargo Society and the Vic-Wells Ballet who had danced with the Markova-Dolin company and done much to stimulate ballet in Turkey, died during the year. Three writers and editors who contributed significantly to dance's wider appreciation and understanding also died: Peter Brinson, whose writings and lectures helping establish a better working climate for dancers and choreographers won him an international following; Chris de Marigny, founder-editor of Dance Theatre Journal; and Peter Williams, founder-editor of Dance & Dancers. Other deaths included the Dane Henning Kronstam (see OBITUARIES), a leading dancer with the RDB who went on to serve as artistic director of the company for seven years; the Dutch Carel Birnie, the driving force behind the founding of the NDT; the German Jrgen Schneider, a distinguished teacher of ballet in Europe and the U.S.; the Russian-French Youly Algaroff, a dancer and impresario; the Russian dancer and choreographer Wazlaw Orlikowsky, a director of ballet companies in Oberhausen, Germany, and Basel, Switz., and the producer of spectacular classical ballets; two former Austrian dancers of the central European style, Rosalia Chladek and Bettina Vernon; and the New Zealander Bryan Ashbridge, formerly principal dancer with the Royal Ballet and associate artistic director of the Australian Ballet. In addition, there were many deaths from AIDS-related illnesses among young men just beginning to make names for themselves in dance. (ANN NUGENT) This updates the article dance, history of. MOTION PICTURES (For Selected Film Awards in 1995, see Table.) The year 1895 saw a race between experimenters in the U.S., France, Britain, and Germany to find a means to project the animated films of Thomas Edison's peep show kinetoscope onto a screen. The race had no clear winner, but the date generally accepted as the birth of cinema is Dec. 28, 1895, when the Lumire brothers began regular projections for a paying public in the basement of the Grand Caf on the boulevard des Capucines in Paris. The centenary of motion pictures was widely celebrated in 1995 with exhibitions, publications, and television programs. For a French film, Lumire and Company, a group of contemporary filmmakers--ranging from Theo Angelopoulos of Greece and Zhang Yimou of China to James Ivory of the U.K. and Spike Lee of the U.S.--were each invited to make a one-shot film, using an original 1896 Lumire camera and working in the same conditions as their earliest antecedents. The commemoration inevitably inspired reflection on the achievements of the first century, and many were left to conclude that, sadly, motion pictures had failed to fulfill the promise of their early years.