ballet
Apollo's Angels: A History of BalletSunday, 21 November 2010
It is rare that you read a book, and mentally shout “Yes! Yes!” as you tick off all the things you agree with, but had never actually verbalised. It is even rarer to read a book where, in a subject you know pretty well, on almost every page you... Read more... |
Curiouser and curiouser: snubbed Scottish Ballet chief bites backTuesday, 09 November 2010
Scottish Ballet’s artistic director Ashley Page yesterday angrily made clear that when he leaves the company in 2012 it will be against his wishes. Last Thursday the company issued an emotionless brief statement that Page had “felt he was unable... Read more... |
Sylvia, Royal BalletWednesday, 03 November 2010
Places, please, deliciousness, please. This is Delibes, a man whose music goes with delectable disbelief, and this is that zany thing, a Fifties nymph ballet, so let us sip hallucinogenic Arcadian cocktails and leave normality at the cloakroom. But... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Birmingham Royal Ballet & English National Ballet, touringThursday, 21 October 2010
“Rudolf thought, what you wanted out of life you had to get straightaway, because if you thought about it too long, you might be dead,” said the ballerina Patricia Ruanne, the first Juliet in Rudolf Nureyev’s version of Romeo and Juliet. Coming a... Read more... |
Flashdance The Musical, Shaftesbury TheatreThursday, 14 October 2010
They keep on coming, these screen-to-stage musical adaptations, noisy, bombastic, as unsubtle as juggernauts. The best of them offer up their uncomplicated entertainment with some pizazz; but Flashdance is a particularly vacuous example of the genre... Read more... |
These Go To Eleven: The Problem of Noisy OrchestrasSunday, 03 October 2010
“Last summer we played a gala performance at the London Coliseum which included extracts from Spartacus, and most of the brass players wore earplugs because the music was relentlessly loud,” says Paul Murphy, Principal Conductor of the Royal Ballet... Read more... |
Onegin, Royal BalletThursday, 30 September 2010
One gin is not enough, not two, or even three gins, to make me susceptible to the idea that John Cranko’s ballet Onegin is anything more than a second-league costume drama with a peachy ballerina role in the middle. But it’s box office, and with... Read more... |
Production Gallery: Russell Maliphant's AfterLightThursday, 30 September 2010
New photographs by Charlotte MacMillan of Russell Maliphant's expanded Afterlight, a mesmerising new dancework premiered at Sadler's Wells this week. The portfolio adds stills from the substantial new sections to ones she took a year ago of the... Read more... |
Russell Maliphant Company, AfterLight, Sadler's WellsThursday, 30 September 2010
We seek it here, we seek it there, we seek it everywhere - that dance work where you lose consciousness of all the hands behind it and surrender to one focus. In Russell Maliphant’s radiant AfterLight, dance, light, sound all move as one, a... Read more... |
Behind the Scene at the Museum: The Staging of the Diaghilev ExhibitionSunday, 26 September 2010
The show's curator Jane Pritchard revealed this wonderful kitchen story in a unique walk-round with theartsdesk this week. Her two-year hunt ranged from Diaghilev's passport to glorious Nijinsky costumes, from the Ballets Russes accounts book to... Read more... |
Scottish Ballet, Geometry + Grace, Edinburgh Festival TheatreFriday, 24 September 2010
Quietly, without pomp and fanfare, Ashley Page has been mustering a balletic strike force over the border in Scotland. Scottish Ballet has launched the new ballet year with a programme that trumps anything else offered in Britain as a season opener... Read more... |
Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929, V&AFriday, 24 September 2010
Museum shows don’t often evoke a sense of smell, but without even trying, this Ballets Russes exhibition has visitors’ nostrils flared. The show is – intentionally – a feast for the eye, and even for the ear, with ballet scores (sometimes rudely... Read more... |
