Ballets Russes
Reissue CDs Weekly: Sandy Denny, Kevin Coyne, France GallSunday, 27 May 2012![]() Sandy Denny: Sandy (Deluxe Edition), Like An Old Fashioned Waltz (Deluxe Edition), Rendezvous (Deluxe Edition)Graham FullerSandy Denny completists unable to drop a thousand to acquire the now scarce 2010 19-disc box set can fill their collections... Read more... |
Russian Ballet Icons Gala: Celebrating Anna Pavlova, London ColiseumMonday, 05 March 2012![]() Fokine, the founding choreographer of the Ballets Russes, wrote on Anna Pavlova’s death, “Pavlova will be the dream of many generations, a dream of beauty, of the gladness of movement.” The superb array of international stars of ballet last night... Read more... |
La La La Human Steps, New Work, Sadler's WellsThursday, 29 September 2011![]() The first half-hour of Edouard Lock’s nameless new piece is some of the most thrilling dance imaginable; dynamic, mercurial, as men and women convulsed with frenzy fight each other in stark spotlights in the dark. They’re dressed in black, so that... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Poulenc, Saint-Saëns, StravinskyFriday, 05 August 2011![]() There's a Gallic flavour to this week's new releases, with two unusual recordings of orchestral music played on period instruments. And there's a set of seminal 20th-century ballet scores, played by a wonderful French orchestra under their much-... 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... Read more... |
Rattigan's Nijinsky/ The Deep Blue Sea, Chichester Festival TheatreTuesday, 26 July 2011![]() Terence Rattigan’s art of concealment is what makes The Deep Blue Sea so rich and true an observation of the way people behave. Being deprived of his concealing mask is the crucial idea of the interesting new play partnering it at Chichester to mark... Read more... |
Contemporary Dance Weekend, BBC FourSaturday, 02 July 2011![]() Yesterday was a day when male physicality and the science of movement preoccupied - when you watch Rafa Nadal or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, you can’t help thinking about the contrasts of grace that achieve the same athletic needs; Nadal the pouncing... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Mahler, Schubert, StravinskyFriday, 10 June 2011![]() A 20th-century Austrian symphony receives a memorable first recording, coupled with a witty, rarely played slice of Schubert. Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony is heard in a powerful reading recorded in the Royal Festival Hall. And we’ve an... Read more... |
Thamar/ Sheherazade, Les Saisons Russes, London ColiseumThursday, 14 April 2011![]() We’ve been so well educated or so roundly brainwashed to expect a certain high standard of Russian ballet that to experience the first two programmes of the three offered by the “Russian Seasons" team at the Coliseum, so-called tributes to... Read more... |
The Blue God/ The Firebird, Les Saisons Russes du XXI Siècle, London ColiseumWednesday, 13 April 2011![]() Anyone who feels, as I do, that the Aesthetic Movement's "cult of beauty" now on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum can't compare with the fabulous Ballets Russes exhibition which went before it can dine again on a feast of Russian colour at... Read more... |
The Ballets Russes Return to RussiaTuesday, 12 April 2011![]() Ninety-nine years ago, there were sights and stars seen upon the ballet stage as had never been dreamed of. A young genius of 32 was the driving engine of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes - the choreographer Mikhail Fokine, who created fantasies of... Read more... |
Black & White, English National Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 17 March 2011![]() At the 11th hour (as we all know from the current telly series), English National Ballet has pulled a gorgeous plum out of its back catalogue that throws open vistas of what a ballet company should be: Serge Lifar’s sumptuous Suite en Blanc. Why... Read more... |
