News clipping: Ballet is always diverse, Ansel Elgort pro dance debut in Quadrophenia, Bracewell-Monaghan garden tour, Megan Fairchild on boycott, more on Misty's legacy

• Mary Scott Manning of the Washington City Paper penned an column titled New Kennedy Center Dance Director May Have a Hard Time Rooting out ‘Woke’ on 16th October 2025, referring to the centre's Director of Dance Programming, Stephen Nakagawa. Manning looked back the history of ballet in the United States and abroad and showed how diverse ballet has been. The column also said Nakagawa's contract with the Washington Ballet expired was not renewed in May 2025. Three months later, he landed on the position with no experience in management. For full article, click here.

  
  

• Actor Ansel Elgort has joined the cast of Pete Townshend's rock ballet Quadrophenia, which is scheduled to play at the New York City Center in mid-November, according to Playbill. The ballet is based on the 1973 album by The Who. Its shows in London and elsewhere in the UK were very popular, with may of them being sold out. I did not know screen actor Elgort (Baby Driver, West Side Story) was a student of the School of American Ballet for five years! It will mark his debut as a professional dancer, apparently. Merde! I hope I will get a chance to watch the ballet at one point, somewhere. Click here for the full article published on 15th October 2025. Click here for the review by The Guardian newspaper.

• William Bracewell and his partner Andrew Monaghan give a tour of their garden in Financial Times' article. Bracewell is The Royal Ballet's Principal and Monaghan is a dancer with Matthew Bourne's New Adventure and a florist. I confess I do not have a FT subscription. You can have a glance of the garden tour in their Instagram post on 18th October 2025. How breathtakingly beautiful.

• Megan Fairchild, New York City Ballet's (NYCB) Principal, spoke up about dancers' boycott of the red carpet and dinner events at the fund-raising fashion gala. "All to say: In the history of NYCB post-Balanchine, the dancers have never had to escalate to this point," she said in her Instagram post on 10th October 2025. NYCB dancers have been fighting for pay increases while their contracts expired at the end of August.

• Fjord Review revisit Misty Copeland's legacy in this article published ahead of the American Ballet Theatre Principal's retirement on 22nd October 2025 (subscription required).

--

Update on 21st October 2025 to change the wording in the first paragraph, omit duplicate words in the second paragraph and to add the reference to subscription in the last paragraph.