ENB
Russian Ballet Icons Gala: Celebrating Anna Pavlova, London ColiseumMonday, 05 March 2012Fokine, the founding choreographer of the Ballets Russes, wrote on Anna Pavlova’s death, “Pavlova will be the dream of many generations, a dream of beauty, of the gladness of movement.” The superb array of international stars of ballet last night... Read more... |
Now English National Ballet loses its second head - Eagling to leaveMonday, 20 February 2012Sudden and disconcerting news from English National Ballet where it's just been announced that artistic director Wayne Eagling is to step down this summer. The company gives no reason for this exceedingly short notice, which leaves them having to... Read more... |
English National Ballet, 2012 SeasonSunday, 19 February 2012English National Ballet's 2012 summer is studded with events to build new audiences, with a new version for children to introduce them to The Sleeping Beauty, collaborations with Tate Britain and hip hop, and a special Olympics event uniting... Read more... |
Strictly Gershwin, English National Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 06 January 2012Craig Hassall, English National Ballet’s managing director, apologised ironically at theartsdesk’s Dance Question Time in November for putting on popular work at ENB, meaning Strictly Gershwin, a song-and-dance entertainment to follow the music-and-... Read more... |
2011: Ballerinas, Cuts and the Higgs Boson TheorySaturday, 31 December 2011The year’s best arts story was not the cuts (which isn’t art, it’s politics), but the appearance in Edinburgh of a mysterious series of 10 magical little paper sculptures, smuggled into the city’s libraries by a booklover. No name, no Simon Cowell... Read more... |
Christmas Dance on Cinema, TV & RadioMonday, 12 December 2011No more is dance the preserve of the few sitting in the theatre - larger companies are leaping hungrily for TV and now cinema screens, having found various ways around the longstanding obstacle of copyright. The BBC is experimenting with live 3D... Read more... |
The Nutcracker, English National Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 09 December 2011I don't want to get the blues at The Nutcracker of all ballets. It should be all snow and Christmas, flowers and presents, firelight, moonlight, candlelight and unearthly brilliance. What with the lush magic of the Birmingham Royal Ballet Nutcracker... Read more... |
theartsdesk Debate: Dance's Question TimeMonday, 07 November 2011What lies ahead for dance as arts spending cuts bite? Can it survive the withdrawal of public funds that support dancers' training, choreographers' creativity, employment costs and health care? Is protest necessary? A panel of the British dance... Read more... |
English National Ballet, Roland Petit Triple Bill, London ColiseumFriday, 22 July 2011An 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... |
Master of French Ballet Chic Roland Petit DiesSunday, 10 July 2011Roland Petit died this morning aged 87, a world choreographer of chic and erotic theatricality who blew away the French classical ideal in a roar of post-war sexual liberation. He created an all-male corps of swans for Swan Lake long before Matthew... Read more... |
Strictly Gershwin, English National Ballet, Royal Albert HallFriday, 10 June 2011Mark Twain once wrote of his experience of going to German opera. It starts at 6, he said, and they sing for four hours. Then you look at your watch, and it’s 6.15. This is also an all-too-accurate description of a night at English National Ballet’s... Read more... |
Swan Lake, English National Ballet, ColiseumWednesday, 23 March 2011As everyone who has been watching Agony & Ecstasy: A Year with the English National Ballet on BBC Four now knows, Vadim Muntagirov, last night’s Prince Siegfried, and Daria Klimentová, his Odette/Odile, are the ultimate in ballet melodrama:... Read more... |