Royal Ballet
Swan Lake, Royal BalletSunday, 23 January 2011
The return of the Royal Ballet’s Swan Lake production coincides with the tumult over the film Black Swan, about which the company’s marketing department must be pretty pleased, even if some of the dancers aren’t. The chief surprise for any newcomers... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Photographer Colin JonesThursday, 13 January 2011
Colin Jones was part of a legendarily painful triangle. Married to one of the greatest of ballerinas, Lynn Seymour, but constantly edged aside by the brilliant choreographer who was obsessed with her, Kenneth MacMillan, Jones left ballet to become a... Read more... |
Photo Gallery: 50 Years of the Ballet, By Colin JonesThursday, 13 January 2011
Rudy and Margot do intensely serious barre in an Italian garden, Lynn Seymour enjoys a "Loyal Ballet" poster on a 1962 Japanese tour, in Glasgow two ballet girls snatch some rest in uncomfortable chairs. The real world of ballet, as shot by the... Read more... |
Giselle, Royal Ballet/ Swan Lake, Russian State Ballet of SiberiaWednesday, 12 January 2011
The chasm between the top-class ballet available to London-area ballet-goers and the low-grade stuff peddled in the regions is the field where the battle to save ballet’s soul is nightly won or lost. Nothing could be more dispiriting than to see the... Read more... |
Cinderella, Royal BalletSunday, 21 November 2010
Christmas rolls around, and so does Cinderella, a welcome alternative to the seasonal dance-critic bah-humbug that is The Nutcracker. First, the good news. The good news is Marianela Nuñez. Always a lovely dancer, in Ashton she just glows. No one... Read more... |
Sylvia, Royal BalletWednesday, 03 November 2010
Places, please, deliciousness, please. This is Delibes, a man whose music goes with delectable disbelief, and this is that zany thing, a Fifties nymph ballet, so let us sip hallucinogenic Arcadian cocktails and leave normality at the cloakroom. But... Read more... |
La Valse/ Invitus Invitam/ Winter Dreams/ Theme & Variations, Royal BalletFriday, 15 October 2010
The ballet world knows uniquely well how to stage gracious gestures to one of its own - dance history is close-knit and last night the Royal Ballet’s first mixed bill of the season turned into a surprising celebration of the Cuban ballerina Alicia... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet in Opera and BalletSunday, 10 October 2010
Those teenage lovers Romeo and Juliet will be dying nightly on a stage near you in various guises for much of the autumn - not as Shakespeare’s play, but as ballets and operas based on it. Next week both Birmingham Royal Ballet and English National... Read more... |
Onegin, Royal BalletThursday, 30 September 2010
One gin is not enough, not two, or even three gins, to make me susceptible to the idea that John Cranko’s ballet Onegin is anything more than a second-league costume drama with a peachy ballerina role in the middle. But it’s box office, and with... Read more... |
My Summer Reading: Ballerina Tamara RojoThursday, 19 August 2010
In the first of a short summer series in which artists and performers tell theartsdesk about what they're reading, ballerina Tamara Rojo talks about the books she's taken with her on holiday, and what she's enjoyed reading. We run short... 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... |
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... |
