classical ballet
Swan Lake, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 03 August 2014
For a dance company, the always delicate balance between preserving your heritage and creating an exciting future becomes especially hard to negotiate when you are the most venerable institution in your field. The Mariinsky Ballet, now on tour in... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 29 July 2014
One of the reasons I always tell ballet sceptics to give Romeo and Juliet a go is that any production with halfway decent lovers and a vaguely competent rendition of Prokofiev’s score should convince them that this art form isn’t just about swans... Read more... |
Coppélia, English National Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 24 July 2014
For all it’s a balmy July here, the litany of appalling news from the world’s conflict zones will have left many of us feeling less than summery at heart. In that frame of mind, you might wonder whether Coppélia, English National Ballet’s latest... Read more... |
La Bayadère, Mariinsky Ballet, Live Cinema BroadcastTuesday, 15 July 2014
La Bayadère is one of the ballets I recommend to people who have never seen ballet before. It has high drama, exquisite tragedy, fabulous costumes, one of the best "white" acts going, and it almost passes the Bechdel test. Sitting in a mostly empty... Read more... |
Royal Ballet School Matinée, Royal Opera HouseMonday, 14 July 2014
This is the heart-wrenching time of year when dance school students give their graduation performances and professional dancers bow out at the end of their careers. How poignant to watch Paris Opéra Ballet étoile Nicolas Le Riche, alone on the vast... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, English National Ballet, Royal Albert HallSunday, 15 June 2014
What a difference a change of cast can make to a show. On Wednesday night I saw Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta as the titular lovers in English National Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Albert Hall (see below for that review). Last night it was... Read more... |
Les Rendezvous/Dante Sonata/Façade, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham HippodromeSunday, 08 June 2014
“The touch is light. We like it so,” wrote Ninette de Valois in one of her later poems. You didn’t know the founder of the Royal Ballet wrote poetry? Don’t worry, you’re not missing much – except the occasional phrase which can serve as an epigraph... Read more... |
The Dream/Connectome/The Concert, Royal BalletSaturday, 07 June 2014
The Dream has at its heart a great partnership. Not just the original, magical pairing of Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley, for whom Frederick Ashton created the ballet fifty years ago (thereby launching one of the top couples in ballet history... Read more... |
Quatrain/Kin./Les Rendezvous, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Crescent TheatreSunday, 27 April 2014
It is proof, as if more were needed, of how very right-on Birmingham Royal Ballet’s director David Bintley is, that he chose to open the International Dance Festival currently taking place in that city with two specially commissioned ballets... Read more... |
Le Corsaire, English National BalletFriday, 10 January 2014
How silly is ballet allowed to be? It is a question that is not, well, as silly as it looks. English National Ballet’s director, Tamara Rojo, has set out her stall with a glitzy production of this 19th-century classic, her first full-length... Read more... |
Jewels, Royal BalletWednesday, 18 December 2013
It has been said that Mozart, so prodigiously talented so young, seemed to be merely a vessel through which God, or the music of the spheres, or whichever higher being one chooses, channelled the sounds of heaven. So, too, sometimes, does Balanchine... Read more... |
Opinion: How can the Bolshoi rise again?Wednesday, 04 December 2013
Money, love, professional jealousy - the three undying motives for personal crime, and all three were present in the Bolshoi Ballet acid trial. An international public that scoffed happily at the OTT ballet horror-show that was the film Black Swan... Read more... |
