classical ballet

Dance 2000-9: From Ballet to Hip Hop

Thursday, 31 December 2009

The Noughts were a bonanza time for builders, scientists and bureaucrats in the dance arena, throwing up numerous fine dance venues and bases, collaborating intellectually with modern choreographers, or targeting social minorities, but the blazing...

Film Q&A Special: Only When I Dance

Monday, 30 November 2009

There are gunshots outside in the street, a boy sits behind his front door desperate to get to ballet class, the two sides of his life colliding in front of his eyes - reality and dream. It’s a favela in Rio, one of the most dangerous cities in the...

Alina Somova: dancer or circus pony?

Monday, 03 August 2009

It is a curious feeling to go to meet a hated figure and find a delicate, blonde girl with a sweet face.On Monday, 23-year-old ballerina Alina Somova opens the batting for the legendary Mariinsky Ballet’s Covent Garden tour in Romeo and Juliet,...

Ulyana Lopatkina: The beanpole who became the soul of Russia

Saturday, 09 July 2005

If you tell a tall, whisper-slim young woman of 31 that she has been described as "the soul of Russia", it is understandable that she looks startled. Two huge, smoke-grey eyes cast a doubtful glance at me, and she murmurs in Russian. Her translator...

Last Dance: Why Our Best Ballets Are Slowly Dying

Tuesday, 20 July 1999

Sir Frederick Ashton, Britain's unrivalled genius at creating ballets, had a simple attitude towards posterity. "You've heard his famous remark, 'Fuck posterity'?" says his nephew, Anthony Russell-Roberts, smiling but eyeing me apprehensively.Ashton...