★★★★✰ The 2021 Royal Ballet School Summer Show, on the Royal Opera House Main Stage, was a different affair to normal with many of the White Lodge Junior School students physically absent because of Covid restrictions. But there was much to celebrate and lots of new work on display too...
Tag - Scott Joplin
The entire Royal Ballet were back on stage and performing for a live audience last Friday in a gala style show which was/is also streamed. Jann Parry was mightily impressed with the dancing and repertoire (★★★★★) if not so much with the live audience experience in a Covid aware Opera House (★★★✰✰)
★★★★✰ Starwise, Bejart's Wayfarer bumps this program from two stars to four.
Scottish Ballet have just announced plans for their Fiftieth Anniversary in 2019, including three world premieres - we have the full press release and touch-base with CEO/Artistic Director Christopher Hampson about the celebrations and what happens beyond...
★★★★✰ The ostensible link between the three works in this mixed bill is that they are by the Royal Ballet's resident choreographers, past and present: Frederick Ashton. Kenneth MacMillan and Wayne McGregor. But none is typical of the choreographers' work...
★★✰✰✰ It all sounds terribly promising, and yet the evening falls as flat as a soufflé left in the oven for too long.
Heginbotham has a knack for choosing just the right music for his dances, none of it hackneyed or used solely for its atmospheric qualities: no Arvo Pärt, no Philip Glass...
An imaginatively contrasting double-bill, it pulled in audiences and left them buzzing.
Alston’s response to music is scrupulous, but Kondo’s percussive clatters, not dissimilar to John Cage’s prepared-piano poundings, takes some getting used to – for audiences, as for dancers.