ballet
Giselle, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumWednesday, 27 March 2013
When the Bolshoi’s wunderkinder, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, suddenly left the company two years ago, the dance world played endless guessing-games as to where they would end up. It was like Claude Rains in Casablanca: round up the usual... Read more... |
Russian Ballet Icons Gala: Celebrating Vaslav Nijinsky, London ColiseumMonday, 11 March 2013
What does _ _ _ _ mean to you? What does _ _ _ _ mean to us all? Questions asked every day by all kinds of people the world over. These same questions were posed last night at the London Coliseum about the doyen of 20th-century dance and... Read more... |
Apollo/ New Ratmansky/ New Wheeldon, Royal BalletSaturday, 23 February 2013
Two world premieres in one night is almost more pressure than anyone can bear - choreographers, commissioning company or audience. Still more when the spotlit dancemakers are probably the two top Western names in the art, Alexei Ratmansky and... Read more... |
La Valse/ Monotones/ Marguerite & Armand, Royal BalletWednesday, 13 February 2013
Genius does not mean having no influences. Monotones, one of the very greatest of Frederick Ashton's ballets, is heavily influenced by other works: by George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations and Apollo, by Marius Petipa’s La Bayadère. And it in... Read more... |
Imagine: A Beauty is Born, BBC OneWednesday, 19 December 2012
They should use the whole Yeats line: "A terrible beauty is born". The programme, A Beauty is Born, being terrible, I mean, rather than the Beauty, which is Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty, his latest dance work, which isn't terrible at all, just a... Read more... |
Kenneth MacMillan Died 20 Years AgoFriday, 16 November 2012
It's 20 years since the death, backstage at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, of a man who scripted high-wire emotions and extreme psychological states in a theatrical language that had widely been held to be the realm of sweetness and majesty.... Read more... |
Viscera/Infra/Fool's Paradise, Royal BalletSunday, 04 November 2012
A new Liam Scarlett ballet has become an event, even as, in this case, Scarlett’s home company, the Royal Ballet, is recreating a work he choreographed last January for Miami City Ballet – the young choreographer’s first international commission.In... Read more... |
The Composer and the Water-Nymph: Hans Werner Henze's OndineWednesday, 31 October 2012
Hans Werner Henze, the composer who died on Saturday aged 86, wrote the music for one of Margot Fonteyn's signature ballets, Ondine, a ballet about an inhuman spirit who longs to be joined to a man - but when she does, he must die. It might almost... Read more... |
Swan Lake, Royal BalletThursday, 11 October 2012
The Royal Ballet’s autumn season began on Monday, but this was the eagerly awaited Swan Lake. Natalia Osipova, ex-Bolshoi, now principal with American Ballet Theater and the Mikhailovsky in St Petersburg, was making her debut as a guest with the... Read more... |
Love Tomorrow, Raindance Film FestivalMonday, 08 October 2012
For Darcey Bussell it’s Baryshnikov in The Turning Point; for Carlos Acosta it’s The Red Shoes. No one at last week's starry premiere of Love Tomorrow at the Raindance Film Festival, when I asked them for their favourite dance film, mentioned Black... Read more... |
San Francisco Ballet, Balanchine/ Liang/ Wheeldon, Sadler's Wells TheatreSunday, 16 September 2012
It's been eight years since San Francisco Ballet were last here, charming us with their finesse and their smiles - welcome back. They offer a boost of spirit to the gloomsters of ballet over here. This small city which punches many times above its... Read more... |
Draft Works, Royal Ballet, Linbury StudioWednesday, 25 January 2012
A few years ago, the word was that a new choreographer was showing interesting things. His name was Liam Scarlett, and although he was very young, some work that had been seen in a workshop was looking promising. It was not long before “promising”... Read more... |
