★★★★✰ "Boy is it good to be in the presence of dancers and musicians again." concludes Marina Harss review of New York City Ballet’s fall season opening performance.
Tag - Bizet
Jann Parry spoke to the internationally renowned Swedish choreographer shortly after the Royal Ballet premiere of his woman with water - they naturally discussed that, but also Covid and his retirement, or not....
★★★✰✰ The first concert was not much of a consolation for all that we have lost. So far, the Royal Ballet appears a token add-on to the opera's contributions...
★★★★✰ It doesn’t get much steamier than Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man, the third of his productions to be presented and screened on Sky Arts during lockdown.
★★★✰✰ Kudos to Lovette for really going out on a limb... The Shaded Line feels truly her own, and it’s clear that she has much to say about her chosen profession...
★★★★✰ Three short but densely packed ballets infused with a strong Russian flavour were at the heart of the Royal Ballet’s last bill of the season.
★★★✰✰ The annual Ballet Icons gala, now in its 14th year, aims to promote Russian culture while providing a Sunday evening's entertainment for Russians in London and ballet-lovers...
★★★★✰ Far from being just one more interpretation of the ubiquitous Carmen, this Cuban version is a unique retelling of the popular narrative, superbly performed.
★★★✰✰ Yo Carmen was originally billed as a radical reimagining of Bizet’s opera and that’s not exactly the case. Don’t go along to this thinking that you will see any representation of the story with gypsies and bullfighters, or any male characters dancing.
★★★✰✰ When Maya Plisetskaya commissioned a Carmen-based ballet from Alberto Alonso, co-founder of the National Ballet of Cuba, she wanted to shake up Soviet ballet conventions...
★★★★✰ The highlight of the second half of the programme was Mats Ek’s Pas de Danse, staged by his assistant, Pompea Santoro.
★★★✰✰ The most interesting item of the programme was definitely the revival of Roland Petit’s L’Arlésienne, created in 1974 when he was director of the National Ballet of Marseille.
★★★✰✰ Every gala needs a revelation, and this one was provided by Sergio Bernal, a Spanish dancer who dominated the stage in an imperious farruca solo from Antonio’s flamenco version of The Three Cornered Hat...
★★★★✰ Some nights at the ballet you just get lucky: all the works are beautiful and the program is well balanced, and each of the casts is led by a ballerina who seems just right for the role.
Acosta’s Carmen is far from a disaster, propelled by committed performances and Tim Hatley’s dramatic designs...
It is almost eight years to the day since The Car Man was last revived at Sadler’s Wells (having premiered in 2000) and it seems even better than I recall...
After a week of modernist works by Balanchine set mostly to Stravinsky, Hindemith, Webern, there’s no denying that a night of French music falls sweetly on the ear.
In recent seasons New York City Ballet has gotten into the habit of starting things off with a week or two of Balanchine. It’s an excellent idea.
George Balanchine’s favorite composers may have been Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, but it’s no secret that he also had an affinity for France and its music...
Symphony in C, a luminous outpouring of legs and arms, crisp geometries, bobbing rhythms, and articulate patter-like conversations for the feet, is a vivid reminder of why one goes to the ballet at all. Luminosity and classical logic, laced with wit and intelligence.