Royal Ballet
Ballo Della Regina/ Live Fire Exercise/ DGV, Royal BalletSaturday, 14 May 2011
Current affairs can be an on-trend choreographer's nemesis. In the new triple bill at the Royal Ballet last night, you could watch a new video-game war-ballet by Wayne McGregor, while blotting out thoughts of the Taliban suicide massacre in... Read more... |
Manon, Royal BalletThursday, 21 April 2011
Manon, Manon, the little minx. Here she comes again - for the 223rd time, last night - and like the legendary ladies of her trade, scrubs up fresh and newly captivating, as if she’d only just skipped off the carriage from the convent. MacMillan’s... Read more... |
Royal Opera & Royal Ballet, 2011-12 SeasonThursday, 14 April 2011
The Royal Opera House's 2011-12 season takes place under the shadow of a 15 per cent cut in public funding and the looming London Olympics. There are 12 ballet bills and 18 opera nights, including one new opera and two new short ballets.Tony Hall,... Read more... |
The Place Prize for Dance/ Cinderella, Royal BalletThursday, 07 April 2011
Reports of ballet’s death are greatly exaggerated, but I’m not equally sanguine about the craft of choreography. Having sat dumbstruck through the four limping dogs masquerading as finalists in The Place’s prize “for dance” [sic] on Tuesday, I... Read more... |
DVD: The Tales of Beatrix PotterThursday, 07 April 2011
Forty years ago, my childhood self wasn't in the least bored by Frederick Ashton's balletic animal magic: I saw it twice in cinemas large and small and asked for the soundtrack LP of John Lanchbery's masterly Victorian-potpourri ballet score for my... Read more... |
Today ballerinas dance for Japanese tsunamiSunday, 20 March 2011The Royal Ballet’s sizeable Japanese contingent of dancers, headed by former principal ballerina Miyako Yoshida, are staging a concert performance of ballet at 4pm today in aid of the Japanese Tsunami Appeal. All tickets are £20, to pay in cash on... Read more... |
Ballet's Bad Girl Has a New SoundSaturday, 19 March 2011
Kenneth MacMillan’s dramatic ballet Manon was premiered in 1974 to a chorus of attacks on its tale of a “nasty little diamond-digger”, as one critic had it. Since then the slut who can’t help herself has risen to become one of the most coveted roles... Read more... |
Rhapsody/ Sensorium/ 'Still Life' at the Penguin Café, Royal BalletThursday, 17 March 2011
For those in the know, Sergei Polunin has been marked out as “the one to watch” from his schooldays. Since he won the Prix de Lausanne in 2006 and joined the Royal Ballet the following year, he has been “the next big thing”. Well, I’m here to tell... Read more... |
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Royal BalletMonday, 28 February 2011
Some ballets are drugs in themselves - you’re under their sway no matter what the performance. Other ballets need drugs to help. This new Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is definitely of the second kind, a very odd, very shallow, very bright and... Read more... |
Production Gallery: The Royal Ballet's Alice's Adventures in WonderlandMonday, 28 February 2011
Charlotte MacMillan took photographs of the first new full-length ballet at The Royal Ballet for 16 years, Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which premiered last night at the Royal Opera House. Designs are by Bob Crowley,... Read more... |
Ballet Boyz, The Talent, AylesburyTuesday, 15 February 2011
Aylesbury, a town without a theatre, has built itself one - a gleaming, glass-fronted, smack-you-in-the-eye 1,500-seater, driven and supported by the district council. High Wycombe and Milton Keynes must beware, so thin are the pickings these days... Read more... |
Royal Opera & Royal Ballet, 2011 SeasonMonday, 31 January 2011
2011 at Covent Garden launches with two much-anticipated world premieres in February: Christopher Wheeldon's first full-length storyballet, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Mark-Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole, written by Richard Thomas (of Jerry... Read more... |
