ballet
Serenade & Giselle, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseMonday, 26 July 2010
We’re getting used to expecting the extraordinary from Natalia Osipova - and then getting some more. With her impish face and farouche capriciousness, with a spring like a high-jumper and shoulders like a swimmer, she is without doubt the most... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Milan: The Farce of Romeo and Juliet at La ScalaSunday, 25 July 2010
How often has one sat at a first night at the opera or ballet, groaning at missed cues, horrors with costumes, disasters with lighting: one thinks they should surely have got it right by this time? And the rest of the evening is somehow... Read more... |
Coppélia, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseThursday, 22 July 2010
Coppélia is the name of the doll in the ballet-comedy - not that of the heroine, who is a bad pixie named Swanilda, a girl of youthful capriciousness but a heart of gold. What you hope for when you go to see this usually rather quaint 19th-century... Read more... |
Reconstructing Ballet's Past 2: Master Restorer Sergei VikharevThursday, 22 July 2010
When Russia was plunged into Revolution in 1917, a chief balletmaster inside the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg feared the worst. It was not simply the death of Tsars he feared, but the death of all culture associated with them, including the... Read more... |
Gala programme, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumMonday, 19 July 2010
The Mikhailovsky Ballet is full of surprises. Predictably for a Russian company it brought a gala programme yesterday - unpredictably, it brought a rare example of St Petersburg 19th-century ballet comedy and a new commission of contemporary ballet... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Choreographer Slava SamodurovSaturday, 17 July 2010
Choreography is a mystery art. How it happens - or indeed what happens - is as elusive to define as pinning down a brainstorm. There is no solid stuff, no rules, no pre-formed maxims, everything moves; the choreographer goes into a studio, finds... Read more... |
Swan Lake & Giselle, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 15 July 2010
It would be tough for any Russian ballet company to come into worldly, balletwise London just ahead of the great Bolshoi, but the Mikhailovsky Ballet make a very pleasing impression in their first week at the Coliseum with a pretty and historically... Read more... |
Reconstructing Ballet's Past 1: Swan Lake, Mikhailovsky BalletWednesday, 14 July 2010
You need very little for a Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky’s music, white swan-girls, a mooning boy, and 32 fouettés for the ballerina in black. That's about it, isn't it? Every traditional Swan Lake we see now is a sort of balletic pizza - a musical base... Read more... |
Bolshoi tour - confirmation at lastTuesday, 13 July 2010The Royal Opera House ticketline is taking a while to catch up - last Friday's Moscow castings are now confirmed in London - but various inconsistencies are cropping up. The full confirmed casting list is below.While it is a fact of life that dancer... Read more... |
Royal Ballet School Matinee, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 11 July 2010
The annual tradition that is the Royal Ballet School Matinee at Covent Garden isn’t just some prestige indulgence for the nervous parents of ballet children fortunate enough to survive the militaristic training and dogged enough to want to continue... Read more... |
The wonders of DelibesFriday, 25 June 2010
Before Covent Garden's performance of Manon the other day, I had always presumed I'd rather have my eyes out than listen to an entire opera by Massenet. How wrong I was. This Saturday I hope to be proved wrong again, when my colleague on theartsdesk... Read more... |
Joseph Cornell & Karen Kilimnik, Sprüth Magers LondonSunday, 20 June 2010
The gallery has been turned into a little girl’s dressing-up closet. The walls are painted midnight blue and dusted with glitter. Ballet shoes, made for small feet, and a discarded tutu are to be found in a decorous pile on the floor. There are... Read more... |
