St Petersburg
Laurencia, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumTuesday, 20 July 2010Rape, marauding soldiers, peasants on the warpath and a flash hero - are we at the Bolshoi’s Spartacus once again? No, we’re at the Mikhailovsky Ballet down the road at the Coliseum where a rather more Erroll Flynn-type spectacle is being offered,... Read more... |
Gala programme, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumMonday, 19 July 2010The Mikhailovsky Ballet is full of surprises. Predictably for a Russian company it brought a gala programme yesterday - unpredictably, it brought a rare example of St Petersburg 19th-century ballet comedy and a new commission of contemporary ballet... Read more... |
Swan Lake & Giselle, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 15 July 2010It would be tough for any Russian ballet company to come into worldly, balletwise London just ahead of the great Bolshoi, but the Mikhailovsky Ballet make a very pleasing impression in their first week at the Coliseum with a pretty and historically... Read more... |
Reconstructing Ballet's Past 1: Swan Lake, Mikhailovsky BalletWednesday, 14 July 2010You need very little for a Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky’s music, white swan-girls, a mooning boy, and 32 fouettés for the ballerina in black. That's about it, isn't it? Every traditional Swan Lake we see now is a sort of balletic pizza - a musical base... Read more... |
A Room and a HalfThursday, 06 May 2010Definitely no standard biopic, Russian director Andrei Khrzhanovsky’s A Room and a Half captures part of the life, and a great deal of the spirit, of Russian poet Joseph Brodsky in a rare and rather brilliant gallimaufry of forms – from archive... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Petrenko's Shostakovich EightMonday, 03 May 2010The charismatic St Petersburg-born Vasily Petrenko has really been turning things around at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra since he took over as principal conductor in 2005. With both standards and audiences on the up he has embarked... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Vasily Petrenko's ShostakovichThursday, 03 December 2009The charismatic St Petersburg-born Vasily Petrenko has really been turning things around at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra since he took over as Principal Conductor in 2005. With both standards and audiences on the up he has embarked... Read more... |
Alina Somova: dancer or circus pony?Monday, 03 August 2009It 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,... Read more... |
Ulyana Lopatkina: The beanpole who became the soul of RussiaSaturday, 09 July 2005If 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... Read more... |
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