Tamara Rojo
Ismene Brown
The cool physical activity of McGregor’s Limen, the crimson passions of Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand, the symbolic sculpture of MacMillan’s Requiem - the weekend's new triple bill at Covent Garden shows three faces of British ballet-making over the past half-century. While none is the masterpiece of its creator, together they describe an arc over time where lyrical emotion became replaced by gymnastic motion, compression by diffusion, individual idiosyncrasy by a kind of balletic collective.Do I say, dance becomes less interesting thereby? False assumption. The fact that Merce Cunningham’s Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Last weekend ballerina Tamara Rojo performed to the largest live audience ever to watch the Royal Ballet, at London's O2 Arena. But what was it like facing 12,000 people, and trying with her partner, the Cuban star Carlos Acosta, to tell the intimate story of two young lovers in Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet? She tells us it's a weirdly out-of-touch experience on that vast stage, almost like being in private. And thank goodness for the cameras. See theartsdesk review of the event.ISMENE BROWN: That photo (main image above) that shows you standing on stage looking out at the empty Read more ...
Ismene Brown
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 extracts from two of them.Born in Canada of Spanish parents in 1975, Rojo came to the UK to join Scottish Ballet briefly, before becoming English National Ballet's star in the late 1990s. She joined the Royal Ballet in 2000, and since then has become a global star, as famous for her intelligence as for her supreme technical virtuosity and powers as a Read more ...
Ismene Brown
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 downwards. Can the body really do that? Another weird sight - dozens of people in full 18th-century French costume and wigs dancing in 40-degree heat on a Cuban stage. Meanwhile coachloads of dancers were going down with swine flu and a 45-year-old retired dancer was flown in from Germany to take the part of a 20-year-old. Surely nothing is as Read more ...