ABT's run of Les Sylphides this season are different - after research, the company, under their musical director Ormsby Wilkins, have rediscovered a 1941 orchestration by Benjamin Britten. Marina Harss reveals all in conversation with Wilkins...
Tag - Les Sylphides
It’s good to see the company perform Sylphides again after a hiatus of eight years. The style hasn’t eroded. ...The dancers believe in it.
My father asked my original teacher in Rockville, Ms. Hood, whether it was viable for me to become a dancer, and she said she thought I could, even though I wasn’t blessed with beautiful legs and feet. But I had a lot of other assets...
Wherever Virginia Johnson goes, she seems to travel on a cloud, with a kind of regal composure few possess in our day. She appears imperturbable...
Rawsthorne was painted by André Derain and Pablo Picasso, and later by Francis Bacon. She was the inspiration for Alberto Giacometti’s etiolated sculptures of walking figures...
Though this year it was Nijinsky’s turn to be reclaimed as a Russian icon, the contents of the gala had little to do with him. Very probably the choice of items – mainly pas de deux - depended on which dancers were available to perform whatever was in their repertoire.
It’s Valentine’s Day and I wish I could write a “love letter” review to the Hamburg Ballet. I am not being sentimental - this company is full of incredible dancers, from principals to corps de ballet...
On the eve of the Clive Barnes Foundation announcing its annual awards we interview Valerie Taylor-Barnes, the great critics widow, about her life in dance (including the Royal Ballet) and the work of the Foundation...
The company danced Serenade well but the very simplicity in its choreography, created as it was initially for students, ironically makes it hard to produce a perfect performance...
All up 'Labyrinth of Love' is a wonderful creative endeavour, a great looker, but an extra dash of audience accessibility is needed. We go "Wow", rather than "Wow, I really loved what that had to say"
There couldn’t have been a better setting for this Bermudian Romeo and Juliet. It was dramatically and effectively staged, using the different heights of the ramparts of Fort Hamilton overlooking the harbour with a natural backdrop of stars and crescent moon.
I don’t regret spending two afternoons in the warm sun before the unbelievably early performances ( 6 and 6:30 curtain times), but overall, the dancing, no matter how artistic or technically accomplished, is seriously hindered by the productions and/or venues.
The arrival of the wilis takes one’s breath away. Not only are they individually beautiful, with their soft port-de-bras and milky-white shoulders, but they are all eerily the same, in every way: same size, same build, same arms, same tilt of the head, same gaze, same feet.
In a life at the BBC the director, Bob Lockyer, was an outstanding champion of dance for the camera. Now 70, he is still indefatigable in his enthusiasms
Symphony in Three Movements: This collaboration of two of the giants of 20th century art (Balanchine, Stravinsky) was clearly a marriage made in heaven, and thanks to Boston Ballet’s newest production, we got to attend the nuptials.