ballet
Boxing Day Bloat: theartsdesk recommendsSaturday, 26 December 2009
The morning after the day before has dawned. If you're not inclined to join the shopping queues, theartsdesk is happy to suggest alternatives. Our writers recommend all sorts of cultural things you could get up to in the next week.See Wicked. This... Read more... |
Dance DVDs Round-Up 1Sunday, 20 December 2009
The improvement in ballet film from video to DVD has been colossal and welcome. The audio experience too has improved by leaps and bounds as it is more and more geared towards computers with earphones, rather than dodgy TVs. Hand in hand with... Read more... |
Les Patineurs & Tales of Beatrix Potter, Royal BalletTuesday, 15 December 2009
The well-prepared adult accompanying an under-10 to the Royal Ballet’s Tales of Beatrix Potter will take with them a pillow and a potty, the pillow for themselves, the potty to tuck under the seat for the necessary moment during this 70-minute... Read more... |
Different Drummer: the Life of Kenneth MacMillanSaturday, 12 December 2009
The spy out in the cold, the alienated Heathcliff of ballet, rough-hewn, moody and a little frightening - this is an image that’s commonly paraded of the choreographer Kenneth MacMillan. His ballets stand up that image, staging barely watchable... Read more... |
Carlos Acosta, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 02 December 2009
It‘s when you see how popstar fame can reach people with more luck than work that Carlos Acosta’s achievement in becoming a truly popular ballet star is underlined. Ballet is just the toughest discipline there is. Great elite artists and great... Read more... |
Margot, BBC FourMonday, 30 November 2009
If Margot Fonteyn and Rudy Nureyev were the most massively important people who ever existed in ballet, then the most massively important question that ever existed in ballet was, did they sleep together? Last night Margot got this over pleasingly... Read more... |
The Nutcracker, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham HippodromeSaturday, 28 November 2009
Peter Wright’s superlative production of The Nutcracker has returned to Birmingham Royal Ballet's repertory for Christmas, a production he created for the company in 1990 and to my mind superior to any other presented in the UK today. Magic, the... Read more... |
Interview: Anne-Marie Duff plays Margot FonteynFriday, 27 November 2009
Anne-Marie Duff doesn't really resemble Margot Fonteyn. Blonde, fresh-faced and blue-eyed, she has nothing of the exotic, olive, Latin complexion that Fonteyn inherited from her Brazilian grandfather. And she never learned ballet, even if, with her... Read more... |
How To Design The NutcrackerSunday, 22 November 2009
Christmas ballet would be unthinkable without The Nutcracker. But what kind of Christmas should it be? This year the UK fields an astonishing array of visions, from Biedermeier formality at the Royal Ballet, to Fanny and Alexander romanticism at... Read more... |
Design gallery: Three NutcrackersSunday, 22 November 2009
Is the look to be Beckmann, Bergman or Nicky Haslam? To accompany the interviews with Nutcracker designers elsewhere, here are three very different design portfolios tackling the eternal magic of this favourite ballet with unexpected reference... Read more... |
Birmingham Royal Ballet, Cyrano, Sadler's WellsFriday, 13 November 2009
Lush, romantic storyballets are as scarce as hens' teeth these days, despite the longing of much of the ballet audience to see them. Not because they're too elementary for today's dancemakers, I'd guess, but because to make one with lively dancing... Read more... |
Psychoanalysing BalletSaturday, 31 October 2009
As a new biography of the Royal Ballet's great choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan by Jann Parry reveals, MacMillan's ballets are often about characters in shadowy explorations of inner states of mind. In part, his willingness to portray loneliness... Read more... |
