Royal Ballet
As One/ Rushes/ Infra, Royal BalletSaturday, 20 February 2010
Someone sharp as a whip thought hard about the price-fun balance of the latest Royal Ballet triple bill. An accountant, probably. Deep inside the cloisters of the Royal Opera House, they said: “Now top price stalls are £97 each for Romeo and... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Sarah Lamb, Royal Ballet Cover GirlThursday, 11 February 2010
You don’t usually find ballerinas in Monument Valley. Cowboys, maybe, but not a pale, slender girl in a glistening golden tutu alighting like an exotic butterfly briefly on a silk-shod toe in the very same red dust that John Wayne rattled across in... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Royal BalletWednesday, 13 January 2010
There are times when critics sheathe their quill tips, others when they don’t. Rupert Pennefather, the tall blond Englishman who has been earnestly promoted by the Royal Ballet as hard as they can to be the next Jonathan Cope, has attracted some... Read more... |
Dance 2000-9: From Ballet to Hip HopThursday, 31 December 2009
The Noughts were a bonanza time for builders, scientists and bureaucrats in the dance arena, throwing up numerous fine dance venues and bases, collaborating intellectually with modern choreographers, or targeting social minorities, but the blazing... Read more... |
The Royal Ballet in Cuba, More4 / The Rite of Spring, BBC ThreeSaturday, 26 December 2009
There were some odd sights in Christmas Day viewing but none more discomfiting, I’d bet, than seeing a ballerina lying on a physio’s couch having a leg dragged quickly up to touch the side of her head while the other leg lay perfectly still pointing... 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... |
Agon/ Sphinx/ Limen, Royal BalletThursday, 05 November 2009
Extraordinary lives dancers lead at Covent Garden - in a single day rushing between studios to rehearse the tortured, introspective Mayerling, the pristine classicism of The Sleeping Beauty, the off-centre acrobatics of Balanchine’s Agon and the... Read more... |
The Sleeping Beauty, Royal BalletSunday, 01 November 2009
Critics did not cover themselves with glory after the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty in St Petersburg on a snowy January night in 1890: “We cannot help regretting the means chosen by the theatre directorate in lowering the standard of artistry of... Read more... |
