★★★★✰ The annual ballet gala organised by Olga Balakleets and Ensemble Productions was deferred to the end of this year because of coronavirus restrictions. Fortunately, invited dancers from European countries were able to travel before the latest measures were imposed...
Tag - Daniil Simkin
★★★★✰ The annual Icons gala provides the chance to see dancers who don't often appear in London...
★★★★✰ Days after the performance, I cannot get James Whiteside’s Ali out of my head. Devon Teuscher’s Medora is charming and warm, pulling off triple fouettées turns and her Italian fouettées with aplomb...
★★★✰✰ 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...
"I think you’ve just got to dare to go there. It’s hard, it’s scary, but creation is always kind of scary in one way or the other. So I think you’ve just gotta have guts and go for it anyway." Alexander Ekman.
★★★✰✰ The program opened and closed with the most recent works: Jessica Lang’s Her Notes and Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium. Both premiered at ABT in 2016, and both are works whose inspiration largely comes from their scores.
American Ballet Theatre Giselle ★★★★✰ New York, Metropolitan Opera House 26,27 May 2017 www.abt.org Giselle Fever Like Swan Lake, Giselle is a centerpiece of the ballet repertoire; American Ballet Theatre performs it almost every spring season, for good reason. The company’s production is handsome and a bit shopworn, with sets by Gianni Quaranta that were originally designed for the 1987 film...
★★★★✰ Alexei Ratmansky’s new ballet for ABT, Whipped Cream, is like a Viennese confection: so layered and airy that it takes a moment to fully take in the flavor of its many ingredients.
★★★✰✰ Be careful what you wish for. The Boy in Alexei Ratmansky’s Whipped Cream wishes for unlimited sweets; overfulfillment sends him to the hospital with sugar hallucinations.
★★★★✰ A second look at Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium confirms the impression formed last season. It is a fascinating work that represents a new direction for the choreographer.
★★★✰✰ I was eager to see American Ballet Theatre’s Sleeping Beauty, mounted by Alexei Ratmansky last year, because of the enthusiastic reviews it has received in the United States. The Paris premiere, however, met with muted acclaim...
★★★✰✰ Le Corsaire, a ballet loosely based on Lord Byron’s poem about a chivalrous pirate, has more action than the latest Bond film. There are pirates! Abductions! Beautiful women in distress! The list goes on and on...
★★★★✰ It isn’t often that a gala program proves satisfying, but this one was the exception.
More from ABT's run of Ashton's "Sylvia" - the time Marina Harss reviews Maria Kochetkova and Herman Cornejo...
★★★✰✰ 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...
Just before intermission Simkin included two film-and-performance works by Alexander Ekman. Simkin and the City, which went viral with the Internet-savvy dance crowd a couple of years ago, always gets a good chuckle.
A highlight of the season is the return of Kurt Jooss’s The Green Table, made in 1932. This meditation on the folly of war in eight scenes has lost none of its punch...
One could imagine a fine partnership developing between Cornejo and Obraztsova. Both are generous and open-hearted performers.
American Ballet Theatre know how to do a Gala and this was their 75th Anniversary as well - Everybody seemed to have a good time says Marina Harss...
Margaret Willis has just been in St. Petersburg, catching up with the Dance Open Festival and also visiting the Vaganova Academy where she had some words with director Nikolai Tsiskaridze...