Royal Danish Ballet's Tobias Praetorius is an anomaly, a young dancer – he’s only 24 – who is already interested in playing character roles. He is also a choreographer and Marina Harss catches up with him about his latest project - a 'Pixiballet' (aimed at children) based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Princess and the Pea...
Tag - Mahler
★★★★★ Though the concert was a treat, could the Royal Opera House please try raising our spirits in future streamings, and give the Royal Ballet the prominence it deserves.
I don’t really believe in lists, but it’s admittedly fun to look back over the year and reflect on moments that have stayed with me. So here they are, in no particular order…
★★★★✰ Starwise, Bejart's Wayfarer bumps this program from two stars to four.
★★★★✰ Papaioannou weaves in many references to Bausch’s work and deliberately asks us to find them, the work is fuelled by his love for her. But he also invites us to move on from the nostalgia trip.
★★★✰✰ This year's Russian Ballet gala was ostensibly in honour of the 200th anniversary of Marius Petipa's birth. Any choreography attributed to him was mostly a long way 'after Petipa', but it's always fun to see excellent Russian dancers deliver pas de deux from Don Quixote, Swan Lake and Le Corsaire.
★★★✰✰ All was danced with the quiet focus, lucidity, and unfussy delivery that characterize the company. No attention-grabbing fireworks...
★★★★✰ The pairing cannily indulges our need for vivid material on these bleak mid-winter nights while also steering us down from the high of the Christmas circuit, with its sugary Nutcrackers and other family-friendly fare.
★★★★✰ The second programme commemorating the 25th anniversary of Kenneth MacMillan’s death revealed his very different responses to music, and to human nature.
★★★★✰ The ENB production of La Sylphide has been staged by three luminaries of Danish ballet, Frank Andersen, Eva Kloborg and Anne Marie Vessel Schlüter, and is, therefore, one supposes, as authentic to the August Bournonville ideals, as possible...
★★★★✰ An outstanding bill in showing Hans van Manen's work for three companies and its rich contemporary diversity - it all looks so fresh and of today.
★★★★★ Alexei Ratmansky’s Odessa left me breathless. The dancing (I saw both casts) was phenomenal on all levels: assured, expressive, and thoroughly dramatic.
One of the go-to international choreographers, particularly if you want something arresting and unusual, is Alexander Ekman. His "Cacti", appropriately featuring a stage full of Cacti, is about to be presented by Royal New Zealand Ballet and Sydney Dance Company - Valerie Lawson catches up with a dance maverick...
It seems now to be a given that any new work by Izadora Weiss will combine dramatic, narrative-based dance theatre with a profound visual impact, danced to challenging, powerful music.
Unlike Kylián, Weiss generally works from an overt storyline and her own libretto for Body Master is loosely based on the life of Gordon Craig, the English pioneer of modernist theatre...
I’ve seen Garrett + Moulton’s The Luminous Edge three times now, and I’ve yet to plumb its deepest currents...
After an absence of eleven years, the Royal Ballet has finally returned to New York; they’re currently presenting two programs at the Koch Theatre,..
The program presented at St. Mark’s this past week reflects all of these positive developments; even more, it seemed infused with a new sense of assurance and identity.
Weiss is taking Baltic Dance Theatre on a journey that needs to be seen outside as well as inside Poland.
The final triple bill of the Royal Ballet’s season reverts to its founder’s faith in classical ballet as an expressive language.