dance

Shakespeare triple bill, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler's Wells

Hanna Weibye Wednesday, 12 October 2016

Shakespeare has always been a fertile source of inspiration for story ballets.

The Sleeping Beauty, Australian Ballet, cinema broadcast

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 06 October 2016

Australian Ballet's cinema broadcast on Tuesday night appears to have been a little under-publicised

Carlos Acosta, The Classical Farewell, Royal Albert Hall

Hanna Weibye Tuesday, 04 October 2016

This is it. This is absolutely, definitely, finally Carlos Acosta's farewell to classical ballet.

La Fille mal gardée, Royal Ballet

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 29 September 2016

In a world of terrifyingly serious news, the opening of the Royal Ballet season with Frederick Ashton's pastoral frolic La Fille mal gardée might seem like a wanton disregard for reality, like a brass band playing "Oh I do like to be beside the seaside" as the Titanic goes down. But that is to misunderstand the reason Fille is so beloved is that it has at its heart a perfectly serious and realistic topic: young love.

The Flames of Paris, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

Hanna Weibye Saturday, 06 August 2016

The Flames of Paris, in Alexei Ratmansky's 2008 reworking, is a ballet of contrasts. Between the first and second acts, so different in pace and quality, between the naturalistic intimacy of certain pas de deux and the stylised posturing of the crowd scenes, between the tedious masque in Act I and the fireworks show-off variations in Act II, between the liquid velvet blood-red curtains and the flat black-and-white line drawing sets.

Comment

The Taming of the Shrew, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 04 August 2016

What do women want? Ballet plots are not the best guide, since the main desiderata – a well-paying job, coffee dates with girlfriends, not to die young of a broken heart – are rarely the lot of ballet heroines. Comedies at least tend to have the not-dying part covered, but they often fall down on at least one of two other big requirements: that one's family should be supportive, and that one's romantic partner should not be a chump.

Comment

Swan Lake, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

Hanna Weibye Saturday, 30 July 2016

"If you know anything about dance," I was told last night by an aged balletomane at the Royal Opera House, "you know that Russian ballet companies are the best." If this is true then the Bolshoi Ballet, biggest of the Russian companies, in Swan Lake, that most quintessential of ballets, must be awe-inspiring.

Comment

Don Quixote, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

Jenny Gilbert Tuesday, 26 July 2016

Exactly 60 years have passed since this company made its first London visit, an unlikely triumph of art over geopolitics. For 1956 was the year Britain was rocked by the Suez crisis and the year the Soviet Union invaded Hungary. British spies Burgess and Maclean had surfaced behind the Iron Curtain after five years on the run and distrust between London and Moscow was acute. Until their plane landed, it was touch and go that the Bolshoi’s London season would happen at all.

Cinderella, Ratmansky/Australian Ballet, London Coliseum

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 21 July 2016

Does Alexei Ratmansky, former Bolshoi director and current world-leading classical choreographer, really love Prokofiev's Cinderella, or did he choose to create a new one for Australian Ballet in 2013 principally because he wasn't happy with his first (for the Mariinsky) in 2002?

Swan Lake, Australian Ballet, London Coliseum

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 14 July 2016

Graeme Murphy's 2002 Swan Lake for Australian Ballet stitches together plot elements from Swan Lake, Giselle and Lucia di Lammermoor, among other things. No bad thing, that; such mash-ups can work well (see Moulin Rouge), and Matthew Bourne proved way back in 1995 that Swan Lake's story can be totally reconfigured and still work gloriously (we do not talk about the 2011 film Black Swan).