sat 21/12/2024

Tamara Rojo

English National Ballet: Ek, Forsythe, Quagebeur review - two masters, two marvels

Of all the classic musical scores that could appeal to a choreographer, three are catnip: Ravel’s Bolero, Bizet’s Carmen, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Each has been set dozens of times and the veteran Swedish dancemaker Mats Ek has notched up...

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Raymonda, English National Ballet, Coliseum review - a creaky old standard, lavishly restored to health

Neglected classics, whether books, plays or ballets, are usually neglected for a reason, and so it is with the three-act ballet Raymonda. A hit in 1898 for the Imperial ballet in St Petersburg but unperformed in this country since the 1960s, its...

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She Persisted, English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells review - a must-see triple bill

She does indeed persist, that remarkable Tamara Rojo. Dismayed by the fact that, in 20 years as a dancer, she had never performed a ballet made by a woman, she mounted a triple bill called She Said, featuring only work by and about women. That 2016...

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Akram Khan's Giselle, Sadler's Wells review - the migrant crisis in a ballet thriller

Of the many good reasons for seeing Akram Khan’s 2016 remake of Giselle – his work is often a headline event, for one – the most compelling is the company performing it. English National Ballet used to be the poor relation of its plusher sister...

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Pina Bausch's Rite of Spring, English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells

Is English National Ballet's current predilection for acquiring European repertoire some kind of anti-Brexit statement, or just smart brand positioning? Last night's performance at Sadler's Wells, a sequel in all but name to the programme called...

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She Said, English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells

Why are there so few female choreographers? Tamara Rojo, bugged by the fact that in 20 years on the ballet stage she had never danced anything choreographed by a woman, has stopped wondering and started doing something about it. ENB’s latest...

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Le Corsaire, English National Ballet, Coliseum

It’s being sold as the ideal ballet for first-timers, but I would blush to introduce even my neighbour’s cat to this Carry On Up the Harem hokum. Worse, its silliness verges on offensive. When, in Rudolph Nureyev’s 1990s production of La Bayadère...

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Le Corsaire, English National Ballet

How silly is ballet allowed to be? It is a question that is not, well, as silly as it looks. English National Ballet’s director, Tamara Rojo, has set out her stall with a glitzy production of this 19th-century classic, her first full-length...

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The Sleeping Beauty, English National Ballet, Milton Keynes Theatre

Has the great ballerina Tamara Rojo ever done a more nerveracking performance than she did last night in Milton Keynes? On her first night as player-manager of English National Ballet, both its new artistic director and its chief ballerina,...

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Ballet industry demands end to "too-thin" dancers

Ballerina Tamara Rojo, director-designate of English National Ballet, is making waves even before she takes up her position in September. Next Monday she is a keynote speaker at a day of events at the Royal Society of Medicine launching the first-...

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Tamara Rojo, prima ballerina, becomes English National Ballet's director

Royal Ballet prima ballerina Tamara Rojo has been appointed the new artistic director of English National Ballet. Though the announcement was officially dated for tomorrow, the press release was issued by the company this morning and the news has...

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The Sleeping Beauty, Royal Ballet

The Sleeping Beauty was the ballet that kissed the then Sadler’s Wells Ballet into stardom in 1946; after a string of poorly conceived Beauty productions, today’s Royal Ballet hurtled back 60 years in 2006 to try to recapture some of that historic...

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