Zurich Ballet – Swan Lake – Zurich
★★★✰✰ But, at least to my eye, the production’s triumph is its final lakeside act. There, the formations of swans, as originally choreographed by Lev Ivanov, become intricate, delicate, lyrical, and intensely moving.
Kevin and Karen Clifton – Kevin and Karen Dance – London
★★★★✰ This show defied the norm: a counter-intuitive observation about a spin-off from the archetypal routine of a Saturday evening institution that millions of us watch with our feet up.
American Ballet Theatre – Harlequinade (premiere) – New York
★★★★✰ Harlequinade is pure entertainment, a work of art whose entire raison d’être rests on its charm and stylishness. If you require that your art contain deeper meanings, read no further…
Royal Ballet – Swan Lake (Scarlett premiere) – London
★★★★★ Liam Scarlett has devised a visual and emotional treat for audiences, fully justifying Kevin O’Hare’s faith in him as a director and choreographer.
Interview: Melissa Hamilton, First Soloist, The Royal Ballet
“I knew that I had to seize my only chance to have a ballet career. Masha Mukhamedov agreed to teach me privately six days a week for ten months…”
Royal Danish Ballet – The Queen of Spades – Copenhagen
★★★✰✰ The good news is that Queen of Spades is a good-looking crowd pleaser and the RDB dancers look fantastic in it – I can’t emphasise that enough. Also good that it’s a step up from his last commission, Frankenstein – thank goodness, really.
Ekaterina Maximova Arabesque Ballet Competition Gala in Honour of Marius Petipa and Lev Tolstoy – Perm
The occasion was the 15th anniversary of the Ekaterina Maximova Arabesque Ballet Competition named, since 2012, after the late and much-loved Bolshoi ballerina, and organised by her husband, Vladimir Vasiliev…
San Francisco Ballet – Unbound Festival Program B: works by Myles Thatcher, Cathy Marston, David Dawson – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Snowblind is a great narrative ballet – the source material is striking and Marston’s interpretation of it, equally so.
Russian Ballet Icons Gala 2018 – London
★★★✰✰ 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.
Feature – Ashton Foundation Masterclass with Monica Mason coaching the Spanish Dance from Swan Lake and the Fairy of Joy from Sleeping Beauty
February’s masterclass, the fifth in the series, featured choreography from the start and end of Frederick Ashton’s tenure as artistic director of the Royal Ballet, 1963-1969.
Gallery – Ashton Foundation Masterclass with Monica Mason coaching the Spanish Dance from Swan Lake and the Fairy of Joy from Sleeping Beauty
Gallery by Dave Morgan…
Royal Ballet/ROH Learning and Participation – Giselle, schools’ matinee – London
★★★★✰ This was indeed a Giselle to treasure as a first encounter with ballet.
Birmingham Royal Ballet – The Nutcracker – London
★★★✰✰ Peter Wright’s glorious ballet might not shine quite so magically in its Bintley/Albert Hall version but the dancers certainly do…
Feature – Frederick Ashton’s choreography for Le Rossignol – a masterclass with Sir Anthony Dowell
The Metropolitan Opera in New York staged “Le Rossignol” in December 1981 as part of a programme commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Stravinsky’s birth… the producer was John Dexter. He told Ashton, back in London, that he could choreograph two dancers as the Nightingale and the Fisherman on stage, while the roles would be sung by opera singers in the orchestra pit…
New Adventures – Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella – London
★★★✰✰ While the production is supremely stylish and the characters well-observed with expressive and romantic choreography, the narrative is padded out in order to fill the music, particularly where traditional elements of “Cinderella” have been excised.
Teac Damsa / Michael Keegan-Dolan – Swan Lake/Loch na hEala – London
★★★✰✰ This is Swan Lake in name only. There is no Tchaikovsky… there are no tutus… there is no-one called Odette, Odile, Siegfried or Rothbart, although there are several characters called McLoughlin…
Gallery – Teac Damsa in Michael Keegan-Dolan’s Swan Lake/Loch na hEala
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
Royal Danish Ballet – Raymonda – Copenhagen
★★★✰✰ 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…
