Dance
Swan Lake, Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe of China, London ColiseumSaturday, 13 August 2011
What you see in the picture is the money shot, and yes, it's a miracle that you won't fully believe, even as you watch it. But there are plenty of other belief-defying miracles in the Guangdong Acrobats’ version of Swan Lake - just don’t make the... Read more... |
Anna Karenina, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseWednesday, 10 August 2011
It is claimed that the philosopher GE Moore had a fantasy. After many years’ work, Tolstoy had finally finished War and Peace. Sonya had copied it out for the umpteenth time. The thing goes off to the printer. Peace reigns. And then, in... Read more... |
Scotch Symphony/ In the Night/ Ballet Imperial, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseFriday, 05 August 2011
Great Mariinsky ballerinas are a breed apart, even from Bolshoi women. They take the stage with a consciousness of entitlement that’s thrilling to watch, and when this almost sacred sense of mystique and grace instilled in St Petersburg comes with... Read more... |
Don Quixote, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 02 August 2011
It is all too easy to be cynical about the ballet version of Don Quixote. With almost no part for the title character, it is a 19th-century Russian take on faux-Spanish dancing, a farce in which the barber Basilio longs for the charming Kitri, while... Read more... |
Homage to Fokine, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseSaturday, 30 July 2011
Mikhail Fokine, choreographer to both West and East, looked forward and back, too. He studied in the old Imperial Theatre School when the tsars ruled Russia, and he was also Diaghilev’s creative genius at the Ballets Russes, moving dance into the... Read more... |
Carlos Acosta, Premieres Plus, London ColiseumWednesday, 27 July 2011
For most dancers the first base is to get principal roles. For a star like Carlos Acosta, second base becomes urgent: to find the career path beyond classical ballet. Like Sylvie Guillem he seeks out a new contemporary dance path to fulfil, being... Read more... |
Swan Lake, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 26 July 2011
Act IV is the core of Swan Lake. It doesn’t seem so theatrically, being a peculiar 20-minute bolt-on after an interval that frequently lasts longer than the act that follows. But musically it transcends everything that has gone before, its thready... Read more... |
English National Ballet, Roland Petit Triple Bill, London ColiseumFriday, 22 July 2011
An obsession with sex and death underlies many of the immortal works of 19th-century classical ballet. Giselle is seduced, La Sylphide does the seducing, the Sleeping Beauty is awakened by sex, the Swan Queen is an apparition of death to Prince... Read more... |
50 years since Nureyev defected and Kirov Ballet debuted in LondonFriday, 15 July 2011
It's 50 years since the mighty Kirov Ballet made their debut London tour - reeling from Nureyev's defection days before at the Paris airport. The tour was promoted by the unique impresarios of Soviet culture, Victor and Lilian Hochhauser. Half a... Read more... |
Royal New Zealand Ballet, From Here to There, Barbican TheatreThursday, 14 July 2011
All ballet companies dream of finding a genuine creative talent among their ranks, and the Royal New Zealand Ballet, visiting from the farthest end of the world ballet map, have one in Andrew Simmons. The unknown name on their triple bill on this... Read more... |
Ashton's Romeo and Juliet, London ColiseumWednesday, 13 July 2011
Like planets crossing in the skies, light years apart, but by some ocular illusion coinciding, this conjunction of the two most thrilling young Bolshoi stars in the world and Frederick Ashton’s rarely staged Romeo and Juliet really must be seen.... Read more... |
Hofesh Shechter, Political Mother: The Choreographer's Cut, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 12 July 2011
Only three years ago, Hofesh Shechter, the Israeli-born, London-based choreographer, made the leap into the big leagues, almost overnight, with his Uprising/In Your Rooms double bill. The following year he produced a "Choreographer’s Cut", a bulked-... Read more... |
