Royal Ballet
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... |
Mayerling, Royal BalletWednesday, 07 October 2009![]() Last night was Sun night at the Royal Opera House, when the opening night of the ballet season was supposedly entirely attended by winners of The Sun’s ballet-ballot. Sadly the production, Mayerling, came into the ballot too late to get the full Sun... Read more... |
Production Gallery: The Royal Ballet's MayerlingTuesday, 29 September 2009![]() Charlotte MacMillan photographed the Royal Ballet's Mayerling, with choreography by Kenneth MacMillan, music by Franz Liszt, and designs by Nicholas Georgiadis, which opens at the Royal Opera House on Wednesday. The cast is headed by Edward Watson... Read more... |
Production Gallery: ROH2's GoldbergWednesday, 23 September 2009Johan Persson took photographs of Kim Brandstrup's new ballet with Tamara Rojo, Goldberg, which was premiered at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House, on 21 September 2009. Music is J S Bach's Goldberg Variations, designs Richard Hudson,... Read more... |
Goldberg, Linbury Studio TheatreMonday, 21 September 2009![]() At last a seriously good new ballet created not just inside the Royal Opera House’s bunker-like Linbury Studio Theatre but actually making complete sense of its space and atmosphere. Kim Brandstrup’s new creation with the Royal Ballet star Tamara... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Tamara Rojo's DiarySunday, 13 September 2009![]() The Royal Ballet's leading ballerina Tamara Rojo was holding a large and not old but already battered diary when we met, pages and dried flowers falling out of it, along with notes and photographs. It’s barely a book, more a pile of loose... Read more... |
Sylvie Guillem, Ballerina in EvolutionWednesday, 09 September 2009![]() The phenomenal French ballerina Sylvie Guillem (b. 1965) has always been a modern woman, for all her classical ballerina dress. She joined the Royal Ballet in 1989 from Nureyev's Paris Opera Ballet, on terms of strictest independence, hardly saying... Read more... |
In the realm of the Nutcracker kingMonday, 18 December 2000![]() At this time of year people who love ballet divide into two tribes: those who are too sophisticated for The Nutcracker and those who will never been too sophisticated for The Nutcracker. The former will say that The Nutcracker is a children’s ballet... Read more... |
