News Clipping: Dance Magazine on tuition-free Juilliard, Stuttgart Ballet may perform for near-empty Kennedy Center, London City Ballet and Maliphant reviews, Vaganova in trouble?

The Dance Magazine published an article on 10th September 2025, in which Damian Woetzel, The Juilliard School's president and a former principal dancer of New York City Ballet, talked about what free-tuition means to its dance programme. The plan to make the school tuition free was announced in April 2025. The school began a drive to raise $550 million to fund the effort but has not provided the timeline yet.

The drop in single ticket sales and subscriptions at The Kennedy Center in the Washington D.C., the United States, have been widely reported since June. Now, Washingtonian said in its article on 3rd September the Stuttgart Ballet might be be performing Onegin for "an Opera House between 4 and 19 percent full" when the German company tours there in 8th-12th October.

London City Ballet returned to the Sadler's Wells Theatre in London, the UK, with the Momentum mixed bill earlier in September. Gramilano called the company's performance of Alexei Ratmansky's Pictures at an Exhibition "an outstanding performance" and described the overall show "astonishing maturity." Fjord Review said, "it was a daring offering, and one that more than delivered."

Gramilano gave Russel Maliphant's Maliphantworks4: In A Landscape | Afterlight even a higher score than London City Ballet. Graham Watts said on 15th September, "In these troubled times, even a brief evening of Russell Maliphant’s dance is a perfect prescription to cleanse the soul." "I could watch it repeatedly, week-after-week."

The online ballet community seems to be buzzing about the alleged drop in the standards of the Vaganova Academy. The German tanz-zeitschrift magazine said in its Instagram post, "Ever since Nikolai Tsiskaridze took the helm there, the standards seem to be permanently declining. At least that's what blogs and forums say—and the fact that a lot of foreigners are being hired at the Mariinsky supports this. Who? We'll reveal more in our October issue."

Here is Onegin by Stuttgart Ballet. Just the amazing Friedemann Vogel.