Royal Ballet School – Summer Performance, ROH Main Stage – London
★★★✰✰ A matinee in two halves: fine before the interval, with dire, dreary choreography in the second half. Thank goodness for the exhilarating Grand Défilé at the close.
English National Ballet – The Sleeping Beauty – London
★★★★✰ It’s a better Sleeping Beauty than the Royal Ballet’s, but it benefits enormously from a stellar performance at its heart, a reminder of how civilised ballet can be.
English National Ballet – Nutcracker – London
★★★✰✰ One of the ballet’s biggest departures from tradition is having the same dancer play Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy. The reasoning is unclear, but Kase proves versatile enough to pull it off…
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.
Royal Ballet – Sleeping Beauty – London
★★★★✰ The grand pas de deux was the triumphant highlight of the fairytale festivities. Hay expressed the prince’s pride and pleasure in his variations; Takada was demure and regal in hers…
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Ashton bill: The Dream, A Month in the Country – Birmingham
★★★✰✰ When I think of Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) under David Bintley I think of tradition with a capital T and the latest double bill underlines that in spades.
English National Ballet – The Nutcracker – London
English National Ballet has been dancing this ever-popular Russian classic in various guises each holiday season for the past 50 years, delighting audiences and inspiring youngsters…
English National Ballet – Swan Lake (Cojocaru / Vasiliev) – London
It is the final act that brings out the best in them. Vasiliev is abject, Cojacaru is truly touching, despairing and resolutely resolved to die.
English National Ballet – Nutcracker – London
English National Ballet Nutcracker London, Coliseum 11 December 2014 Gallery of pictures by Dave Morgan www.ballet.org.uk You know that Christmas is really on its way when you see your first Nutcracker. And for…
English National Ballet – Swan Lake – Milton Keynes
Eight paragraphs of praise and I haven’t yet mentioned Alina Cojocaru! My advice to anyone yearning to see the special beauty of ballet is simple: take any chance you can to see Cojocaru dance.
Royal Ballet – The Sleeping Beauty – London
….thanks and admiration to Francesca Hayward for a blithe, swift Songbird Fairy, probably the most pleasing I’ve ever seen…
English National Ballet – The Nutcracker – London
Despite the frequency with which the work is performed, the company manage to retain a warmth and freshness in their presentation of it.
English National Ballet to Premiere Le Corsaire – Autumn 2013
English National Ballet will premiere a new production of Le Corsaire (The Pirate), one of the great 19th Century classics, in October 2013. English National Ballet will be the first UK company to perform the complete work…
Birmingham Royal Ballet – The Grand Tour, Faster, The Dream – London
The programme included works both old and new but it was not an altogether successful mixture. The dancers looked most at home, and at their most sleek and impressive, in Faster, a work made on them this year by their Artistic Director, David Bintley, evoking the striving of competitors in the Olympics.
Hong Kong Ballet – Giselle – Hong Kong
Keshyshev made a remarkable debut as Albrecht, partnering Zhang Si Yuan who was also dancing Giselle for the very first time. Both dancers were so confident, and assured, that it was hard to believe that they were actually making debuts…
