dance
La Bayadère, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 14 August 2011
The bayadere bears on her shoulder a vase of holy water, and the story of the ballet La bayadère is of her refusal to compromise. She could better her life in two political deals: become the high priest’s mistress, or later, when bitten by a poisonous snake, take the antidote and live on while watching her sworn lover marry the princess who he knows tried to murder her. She refuses both. She remains, morally, the vessel of a purity that it would kill her spirit to give up. Read more... |
Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House: The HighlightsSunday, 14 August 2011
The Mariinsky Ballet has just completed a three-week season, with terrific highs (and the odd low). This was the 50th anniversary of the Mariinsky's (then Kirov's) first London visit, in 1961, and it is worth highlighting the role impresarios Victor and Lilian Hochhauser have played in the cultural life of London. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Stephen Hough, Joby Talbot, SchoenbergSaturday, 13 August 2011
This week we've a glittering, shimmering ballet score with an aquatic theme, and a brilliant British pianist shows off his compositional skills. Plus, in a week where we all need cheering up, 20th-century music's scariest genius shows that he had a fully developed sense of humour. Read more... |
Swan Lake, Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe of China, London ColiseumSaturday, 13 August 2011
What you see in the picture is the money shot, and yes, it's a miracle that you won't fully believe, even as you watch it. Read more... |
Anna Karenina, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseWednesday, 10 August 2011
It is claimed that the philosopher GE Moore had a fantasy. After many years’ work, Tolstoy had finally finished War and Peace. Sonya had copied it out for the umpteenth time. The thing goes off to the printer. Peace reigns. And then, in the middle of the night, Tolstoy leaps out of bed, shrieking, “I forgot to put in a yacht race!” Read more... |
Scotch Symphony/ In the Night/ Ballet Imperial, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseFriday, 05 August 2011
Great Mariinsky ballerinas are a breed apart, even from Bolshoi women. They take the stage with a consciousness of entitlement that’s thrilling to watch, and when this almost sacred sense of mystique and grace instilled in St Petersburg comes with vivid expressive distinction too, then there really is nothing like it. Even if three American 20th-century ballets might... Read more... |
Don Quixote, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 02 August 2011
It is all too easy to be cynical about the ballet version of Don Quixote. With almost no part for the title character, it is a 19th-century Russian take on faux-Spanish dancing, a farce in which the barber Basilio longs for the charming Kitri, while her father wants her to marry a rich fop. As the Radio Times used to say, “Much hilarity ensues.” Read more... |
Homage to Fokine, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseSaturday, 30 July 2011
Mikhail Fokine, choreographer to both West and East, looked forward and back, too. He studied in the old Imperial Theatre School when the tsars ruled Russia, and he was also Diaghilev’s creative genius at the Ballets Russes, moving dance into the 20th century before and after the Revolution. The Mariinsky, once his home, is a premier exponent of his multifaceted styles. Read more... |
Carlos Acosta, Premieres Plus, London ColiseumWednesday, 27 July 2011
For most dancers the first base is to get principal roles. For a star like Carlos Acosta, second base becomes urgent: to find the career path beyond classical ballet. Like Sylvie Guillem he seeks out a new contemporary dance path to fulfil, being still full of glorious physical vigour and still well under 40. But it turns out to be about wise investment. Read more... |
Swan Lake, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 26 July 2011
Act IV is the core of Swan Lake. It doesn’t seem so theatrically, being a peculiar 20-minute bolt-on after an interval that frequently lasts longer than the act that follows. But musically it transcends everything that has gone before, its thready little waltz one of the most delicately tragic things Tchaikovsky ever wrote. And balletically, Lev Ivanov’s rigidly structured classicism draws viewers into the terrifying void that is death. While emotionally the frozen swan-maiden of... Read more... |
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