ballet
Rhapsody/Tetractys/Gloria, The Royal BalletFriday, 07 February 2014
Is it odd that, in a bill containing an achingly contemporary première and a classic meditation on the First World War, a pastel-painted present for the Queen Mother’s birthday should race away with the honours?Not if it was by Frederick Ashton, the... Read more... |
Le Corsaire, English National BalletFriday, 10 January 2014
How silly is ballet allowed to be? It is a question that is not, well, as silly as it looks. English National Ballet’s director, Tamara Rojo, has set out her stall with a glitzy production of this 19th-century classic, her first full-length... Read more... |
Jewels, Royal BalletWednesday, 18 December 2013
It has been said that Mozart, so prodigiously talented so young, seemed to be merely a vessel through which God, or the music of the spheres, or whichever higher being one chooses, channelled the sounds of heaven. So, too, sometimes, does Balanchine... Read more... |
Sadler’s Wells, Ambitious New PlansTuesday, 05 November 2013Alastair Spalding, Sadler’s Wells’ Chief Executive and Artistic Director, today announced that the theatre is looking for a fourth London venue, which it hopes will open in just four years’ time.Not content with two proscenium spaces (the main stage... Read more... |
The Sleeping Beauty, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler’s WellsFriday, 18 October 2013
Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Sometimes, of course, it’s even better to be both. And Birmingham Royal Ballet, in their all-too-brief London season, have been both lucky and good. Lucky, because they have Peter Wright’s little jewel of... Read more... |
Bintley Triple Bill, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler’s WellsWednesday, 16 October 2013
Is David Bintley the one that got away, the wrong turning the Royal Ballet took in the early 1990s? I have long thought so, and watching their current triple bill, the feeling only grows. Bintley trained at the Royal Ballet School, graduated into... Read more... |
Don Quixote, Royal BalletTuesday, 01 October 2013
The opening night of the autumn season brings a gala first night, Carlos Acosta’s staging of Petipa’s Hispano-Russo-Austro-Hungarische castanet-fest, Don Quixote, with starry leads (Marianela Nuñez and Acosta himself), a very obviously expensive new... Read more... |
Jewels, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 13 August 2013
The Bolshoi’s summer season in London has so far been straight-down-the-line trad: Swan Lake as an opener, Bayadère, Sleeping Beauty. Now, however, with Balanchine’s Jewels, they’ve at least dipped a pointe shoe into the 20th century, if rather... Read more... |
Mayerling, Royal BalletSunday, 16 June 2013
My great-grandmother used to say, "In the fall, leaves fall," meaning that as the weather gets colder, people die. The Royal Ballet has had leaves falling all year, and in the height of the (ha!) summer one of the most tenacious, and most beautiful... Read more... |
Mangan, Royal Academy Opera Students, BBCSO, Denève, Barbican HallSaturday, 27 April 2013
Highly sexed cockerels and cats, a lovesick lion and a ballet of frogs might not seem like a recipe, or rather a menagerie, for profundity. Yet in two ravishing French man (or child)-meets-beast fables for the stage, Poulenc and Ravel are quite... Read more... |
Laurencia, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumWednesday, 03 April 2013
It’s not often you go to a ballet to watch a history lesson unfold, but Laurencia, the 1939 Soviet ballet choreographed by Vakhtang Chabukiani, gives us exactly that, and a gripping one under the froth and fun.Based on the 17th-century playwright... Read more... |
Don Quixote, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumSunday, 31 March 2013
If you want virtuosity, there’s only one place to be in London right now, and that’s watching the Mikhailovsky’s fine production of that demented old warhorse, Don Quixote, with Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev in the leads.Don Quixote is one... Read more... |
