Royal Ballet
David Nice
Once a year is never too often to revisit one of the most perfect of all orchestral scores (not just for the ballet), a climactic Russian Imperial Pas de deux and the old-fashioned magic of illusionist painted flats flying in and out across a production/choreography that manages to crack the soft nut of a fantastical story only a quarter told. It all adds up in Peter Wright's Royal Ballet Nutcracker. His rekindling of as many elements as he can fit from the Hoffmann-via-Dumas original adapted by Petipa and somewhat reluctantly followed by Tchaikovsky is only as good as his two pairs of Read more ...
The Unknown Soldier, Infra, Symphony in C, Royal Ballet, review - WWI ballet honours obscure tragedy
Jenny Gilbert
Pity fatigue is a risk for any artwork marking the anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. There can’t have been a man or woman in the Royal Opera House on Tuesday night who hadn’t already read, watched, or otherwise had their fill of the horrors of the Western Front and the never-ending debate over the futility of it all. So a 30-minute ballet, coming nine days after the Cenotaph solemnities and commissioned by the Royal Ballet, inevitably felt like an unrequested encore.The Unknown Soldier, a collaboration between choreographer Alastair Marriott, designer Es Devlin and composer Dario Marianelli Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
A new Swan Lake at the Royal Ballet is a once-in-a-generation event. Liam Scarlett, choreographer of the production that opened this week, was a babe in arms when its predecessor was created by Anthony Dowell and Yolanda Sonnabend in 1987, and – given the evidently lavish investment in the new show – the Royal Opera House accountants at least will be hoping Scarlett is a pensioner before his interpretation is retired.No small pressure, then, on Scarlett and perhaps even more on designer John Macfarlane. Swan Lake is, famously, a malleable classic, whose main ingredients of lakeside, swans, Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Everyone knows that Elizabeth I was a monarch of deep intelligence and sharp wit. Fewer know how good she was at the galliard. This was a virile, proud, demandingly athletic dance, usually performed by the men at courtly gatherings, and the fact that the Queen of England so enthusiastically flouted convention in this way says a lot about her.Will Tuckett’s Elizabeth - revived at the Barbican Theatre following its success at the Linbury Studio two years ago – deliberately avoids quoting the dances and music of the time, but homes in on that independence of spirit and zestful physicality. Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
One day someone will come up with an algorithm for the perfectly balanced triple bill. Until then ballet directors will have to make do with hit or miss. The Royal Ballet’s latest three-part offering would appear to tick the boxes: something old, something new-ish, and something just for fun. Yet while the evening can’t be faulted on the quality of performance, the effect is less than the sum of its parts.The best comes first, with a first revival of Wayne McGregor’s Obsidian Tear, a work created two years ago for an all-male ensemble. As is often the case with this choreographer, nothing is Read more ...
David Nice
"Massenet feels it as a Frenchman, with powder and minuets," declared Puccini in annoucing his own operatic setting of the Abbé Prévost's 1731 novel Manon Lescaut. "I shall feel it as an Italian, with desperate passion." That's the usual Kenneth MacMillan keynote, too, and in his third full-length ballet he was liberated to a degree by a Massenet score very different from that of the opera, rendered even more meaty by the re-orchestration of last night's conductor, Martin Yates. Yet the heroine remains elusive, oddly remote both to the man she loves and the men who pay her, and Francesca Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
The Royal Ballet last night presented an evening of Bernstein-scored ballets, two of them premieres by Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon and the other a revival of Liam Scarlett's 2014 Age of Anxiety. Celebrated and accessible composer; celebrated and accessible choreographers; nice centenary bandwagon to hitch them to – surely a recipe for triple success?Or triple... not-success. Last night delivered three pieces that didn't do justice to their music, which doesn't exactly spell triumph for a programme focused on a major composer. Neither McGregor nor Wheeldon appears to have been Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
The run of Giselle that opened at the Royal Opera House last night was completely sold out before it even started, and no wonder. Pair Sir Peter Wright's eerie production with some very fine casts and the reliable classiness of the Royal Ballet's corps de ballet and you have an enchanting package indeed.Last night's Giselle was Marinela Nuñez, impeccable in every respect, but particularly charming as the merry, hopeful peasant girl of the first scenes (pictured below), and the loving spirit of the second act (the mad scene does not come quite so easily to this naturally sunny ballerina). The Read more ...
theartsdesk
With forelock-tugging celebrations of a choreographer who died 25 years ago and a summer visit by the Mariinsky the highest-profile events in the calendar, 2017 may not be remembered as a vintage year for British dance. But there were striking moments aplenty if you knew where to look for them, and companies, directors and dancers making magic even in ordinary circumstances. As the year ends, theartsdesk correspondents cast their minds back and pick out the best of those magical moments. As always, the criterion is memorability: this is not a comprehensive review of who was worthy or Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
For some people, the festive season starts with The Nutcracker. And as it happens, this year the opening night of Sir Peter Wright’s production for the Royal Ballet was also the performance beamed live to hundreds of cinemas around the UK and many more around the world. There’s confidence for you. A global relay on the first night without so much as an edit button.But then, these dancers are in their comfort zone in this particular show, which exploits all the things the Royal is best at: naturalistic drama combined with a coolly restrained classicism, and a sense (however carefully Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
On paper, the appeal of a Sylvia revival is questionable. If even the choreographer (Frederick Ashton) wasn't sure his 1952 original was worth saving for posterity, do we really want to watch a 2004 reconstruction posthumously pieced together from rehearsal tapes? Especially given that, with its arcadian setting, it totters delicately on the dividing line between delightfully arch and camp as the Queen Mother's curtains? Happily I can report, after last night's performance by the Royal Ballet, that this revival comes down on the right side of the line, and is absolutely worth your time.Sylvia Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Of all the stories Arthur Pita could have chosen to wrangle for his new narrative ballet, he chose one about wind, perhaps the trickiest element of all to represent on a live stage. Tricky because of course you can’t see wind, you can only see its effects. Tricky, too, because – in extremis, as this is – it does mad things to hair-dos, costumes, and the ability of the cast to keep a grip on props and even dance the steps. But it’s precisely that craziness that gives Pita’s first main-stage commission for the Royal Ballet – accorded the prime central spot in a contemporary mixed bill – its Read more ...