Birmingham Royal Ballet – Coppelia and Three Short Story Ballets – Bristol and Birmingham
★★★✰✰ I went to Bristol to catch Coppelia and the specific lead casting of Celine Gittens and Tyrone Singleton – who have now totally transitioned from being rising stars to fully risen Principals.
International Dance Festival Birmingham 2016 – Ballet BC, Shun Ito/Kei Miyata/EEIH, Motionhouse & free events
★★★✰✰ IDFB is great for Birmingham and I hope those in and around the city filled their boots.
Carlos Acosta at IDFB – A Classical Farewell – Birmingham
★★★★✰ Winks, finger wags, flamboyant leaps in a criminally short leather skirt – Carlos Acosta gives the people what they want in this winsome bill, a mix of variations he’s assembled to mark his retirement after more than 25 years on stage.
Celebrating the Birmingham Royal Ballet / Peter Wright Nutcracker at 25
Birmingham Royal Ballet have been celebrating the Silver Anniversary of Sir Peter Wright’s great Nutcracker production and the company’s move to Birmingham that same year.
Gallery – Birmingham Royal Ballet in The Nutcracker
Gallery by Dave Morgan of Sir Peter Wright’s much admired production now being danced on its 25th anniversary…
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Swan Lake (Mathews and Lawrence) – Birmingham
Some partnership work because the dancers are so different and others, as here, work because they share a style and approach – unaffected, nuanced, true and richly musical.
Birmingham Royal Ballet – The King Dances, Carmina burana – Birmingham
The King Dances is a man’s ballet – it has to be said a very pretty man’s ballet with gorgeous designs by Katrina Lindsay.
Birmingham Royal Ballet – La Fin du jour, Miracle in the Gorbals, Flowers of the Forest – Birmingham
See these thoughts as a heads up and, ultimately, encouragement to Londoners to go and see an interesting bill…
Book – Constant Lambert, Beyond The Rio Grande – by Stephen Lloyd
Lloyd has written widely on English composers and is meticulous in combing together many fragmentary impressions of Lambert. The book weighs over 1.5 kilos, 419 pages of small print, most heavily annotated in smaller print still, with a further 150 pages of appendices.
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Swan Lake (Gittens debut) – Birmingham
Anyway I’d never dream of missing a BRB Lac and usually get up to Birmingham for a matinee – and this time luckily to see Celine Gittens debut as Odette/Odile. There was a lot of hubbub around the performance…
