★★★★✰ The streamed in-house recording of the premiere on 24 October 2020 features Ida Praetorius as the Sylph, Jon Axel Fransson as James and Kizzy Matiakis as the witch, Madge – her last role with the company.
Tag - Copenhagen
★★★✰✰ The good news is that Queen of Spades is a good-looking crowd pleaser and the RDB dancers look fantastic in it - I can't emphasise that enough. Also good that it's a step up from his last commission, Frankenstein - thank goodness, really.
★★★✰✰ All up, I think this production demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of "Raymonda" as a ballet. It certainly is a fabulous looking (and listening) calling card which might tour well...
★★★★✰ ...I was again struck by just how effortlessly a story can be communicated and emotions laid bare by ballet - it was a triumph.
★★★✰✰ Seeing the premiere of Kim Brandstrup's Shaken Mirror in Copenhagen proved both an uplifting and a frustrating experience.
It's a busy time for Kim Brandstrup with premieres at Rambert, New York City Ballet and, later in spring, a full-evening work for Royal Danish Ballet. Jann Parry interviews one of the most thoughtful and reflective of choreographers...
The Royal Danish Ballet's production of Manon is a rather different affair from the Covent Garden original which I fled from sometime in the 1990s and have never revisited....
Most of this run of performances was sold out, or very nearly so, so the Copenhagen audience evidently appreciates what Hubbe is doing. To me, though, this latest revision of Napoli felt like a step too far...
...assuming that the company acquired Come Fly Away in the hopes of selling a lot of tickets and bringing in new audiences, it's been a terrific success: the whole run is sold out ...and I imagine that the standing ovation the night I was there is repeated every time.
In fact delight was the keynote of the whole evening ...I was very happy to see the whole company reclaiming their 'joy in dancing', the Bournonville essence which is fundamentally what keeps these old ballets alive.
5 Questions for Cathy Marston as she and Bern Ballett, the company she directs, prepare to show their latest work, Witch-hunt, at London's Royal Opera House...
The Royal Danish Ballet's Dans2Go, year 3. As previously, the aim is to give newcomers a taste of different types of dance, at low prices...
So far as I know, no major company has ever before attempted a time-shifted Bayadère, so Hübbe had the whole of history to pick from. He chose the later years of the British Raj...
...cut down to a single act and shown as part of a properly-balanced double or triple bill it could work beautifully, rather than sending me home feeling hungry.
Several times during the evening I wondered how much anyone who happened never to have seen Lund before would have understood about him from this performance. They would have learnt about his peerless Bournonville technique, and about his ability to get under the skin of the character he's playing...
It's said that for financial reasons there will be no more performances of Lady of the Camellias here after this run – that would be a little tragedy of its own: these dancers deserve the chance to grow in their roles and their audience deserves the opportunity to see them do it. Let's hope some way will be found to make it happen.
One of the posters for the Royal Danish Ballet's Dans2Go programme, now in its second year, describes it as 'Ballet for Beginners': it's intended primarily as a taster evening to show new audiences what ballet can do, via three short pieces covering the widest possible range. All tickets cost 150 kroner – about £17 – or half that for under-25s or students, so it's not surprising that every...