★★✰✰✰ ...watching La Bayadère can feel like observing an artifact stuck in another era, and indicates the need for a conversation about what a contemporary, forward-thinking repertoire should look like.
Tag - Paris Opera Ballet
★★★✰✰ Semperoper's dancers distort the classical ballet line more than the Paris Opera Ballet's (or ENB's) and don't bother much with fifth positions or precise épaulement for Forsythe's endless tendus. They seem contemporary dancers rather than étoiles being outrageous.
★★★★✰ Crystal Pite’s work stands out as the crowd-pleaser. With huge cheers and applause, we rise to our feet for the dancers.
"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.
★★★★★ Ballet de Lorraine have reconstructed Relâche, a fascinating work first performed by the Ballets Suédois in 1924-25. It had caused almost as great a scandal as the 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring in the same Théâtre des Champs-Elysées...
Head and shoulders above other new work this year was Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern for the Royal Ballet...
Six Performances That Stayed with Me in 2017 - Marina Harss with her personal selection of New York dance memories this last year.
★★★✰✰ 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...
★★✰✰✰ All the ingredients seemed promising but the evening was disappointing, struggling to recover from the tedium of the dire opening item...
★★★✰✰ The choreographer and L.A. Dance Project director Benjamin Millepied is a mover and a shaker, a clever curator, a man of taste, a force in the dance world. But is he good choreographer?
★★★★✰ Hoffalt brings an elegantly mature intelligence to the part... Laurretta Summerscales will leave a hole in the company when she takes her sabbatical next season...
★★★★✰ It’s not often that one gets to see three such companies side by side, or to experience a work as familiar as Jewels with new eyes...
★★✰✰✰ There are dances that one figures out in the first five minutes. Hope as one might that the piece will evolve or turn a corner, it soldiers on in the same vein, section after section, until the end.
★★★★★ One cannot help but observe that while the programmes of other companies both hit and miss, in terms of their critical appreciation and popular appeal, ENB is continually raising the bar...
★★★★✰ Tree of Codes ...shows McGregor as an out-and-out showman who dazzles us senseless with design, music, dancers and dance. I'm not sure if he really planned it that way, but I'll take it every time.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
Robert Barnett joined New York City Ballet in 1949. In those early years he worked closely with Balanchine and Robbins particularly before going on to direct Atlanta Ballet. Now 91 he is still actively involved in dance and passing on all he knows...
★★★✰✰ The Siberian company performs its Fille mal gardée with good heart and neat feet.
★★★✰✰ Jann Parry with an alternative view and detailed account of the Akram Khan Giselle for English National Ballet...
★★★★✰ San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Houston Ballet have come together in LA to celebrate William Forsythe probably the most influential ballet choreographer of his generation. Claudia Bauer reports on a fine night...