ballet
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... |
English National Ballet, 2011 SeasonTuesday, 11 January 2011
English National Ballet's 2011 season listings pivot largely on the populist Strictly Gershwin dansical before returning to The Nutcracker for next Christmas. In between there are two intriguing programmes given brief but welcome London viewings,... Read more... |
Year Out/Year In: Dance is Still With Us (So Far)Wednesday, 29 December 2010
I was taken to task by a commenter this year who told me I should go and review music, if I couldn't enjoy dance. Hm. One takes such things to heart, but it's humbug. While piling up memories over 25 years might mean that the noise in my memory is... Read more... |
Photo Gallery: Ballet in FocusMonday, 13 December 2010
A display of rarely seen photographs of key ballet dancers from the start of the 20th century goes on display at the National Portrait Gallery. The gallery holds the largest surviving archive of the once-fashionable Bassano Studio, London, including... Read more... |
The Nutcracker, English National Ballet, London ColiseumSunday, 12 December 2010
The lighting chief holds the success of a magical fairy-tale staging in his hands. Whatever the designer has done, however fantastical and virtuosic his visions, the lighting chief can ruin it. So it is with English National Ballet’s new Nutcracker... Read more... |
Cinderella, Birmingham Royal BalletThursday, 25 November 2010
Fairy-tale ballets are a bitch. We all grow a mental image of what is “right” when we are about five, and then woe betide anyone whose vision is different – because of course it isn’t different, it’s “wrong”. So David Bintley and his designer,... Read more... |
Apollo's Angels: A History of BalletSunday, 21 November 2010
It is rare that you read a book, and mentally shout “Yes! Yes!” as you tick off all the things you agree with, but had never actually verbalised. It is even rarer to read a book where, in a subject you know pretty well, on almost every page you... Read more... |
Curiouser and curiouser: snubbed Scottish Ballet chief bites backTuesday, 09 November 2010
Scottish Ballet’s artistic director Ashley Page yesterday angrily made clear that when he leaves the company in 2012 it will be against his wishes. Last Thursday the company issued an emotionless brief statement that Page had “felt he was unable... 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... |
Romeo and Juliet, Birmingham Royal Ballet & English National Ballet, touringThursday, 21 October 2010
“Rudolf thought, what you wanted out of life you had to get straightaway, because if you thought about it too long, you might be dead,” said the ballerina Patricia Ruanne, the first Juliet in Rudolf Nureyev’s version of Romeo and Juliet. Coming a... Read more... |
Flashdance The Musical, Shaftesbury TheatreThursday, 14 October 2010
They keep on coming, these screen-to-stage musical adaptations, noisy, bombastic, as unsubtle as juggernauts. The best of them offer up their uncomplicated entertainment with some pizazz; but Flashdance is a particularly vacuous example of the genre... Read more... |
These Go To Eleven: The Problem of Noisy OrchestrasSunday, 03 October 2010
“Last summer we played a gala performance at the London Coliseum which included extracts from Spartacus, and most of the brass players wore earplugs because the music was relentlessly loud,” says Paul Murphy, Principal Conductor of the Royal Ballet... Read more... |
