Ivan Putrov's latest project, Against the Stream, gets its premiere on Sunday 7 April 2019 at the London Coliseum. Jann Parry finds out all about it...
Author - Jann Parry
★★★✰✰ Somehow, still at the start of the run, the production seems sanitised, nicely 'English' in spite of Nicholas Georgiadis's imposing Italian Renaissance sets and costumes. Different casts yet to come might bring fresh discoveries...
This programme celebrated Annette Page's career with the Royal Ballet and supported the Motor Neurone Disease Association. She died at the age of 84 of MND, a cruel disease for a former dancer and an articulate, witty woman...
★★✰✰✰ Could Liam Scarlett's monstrous Frankenstein be fixed with more, better surgery? Evidently not, in this revival, three years after its creation.
★★★★✰ Alston's choreography is formal in that it has structure, style and steps, instead of resorting to running in circles. Its partnering etiquette is courteous rather than abusive.
★★★★★ With Marianela Nunez and Vadim Muntagirov... Theirs was a performance that caught up everyone in the sheer pleasure and excitement of spectacular dancing.
★★★★✰ - Royal Ballet School in Liam Scarlett's new Cunning Little Vixen. ★★✰✰✰ - Royal Ballet's Yasmine Naghdi debut in Two Pigeons.
★★★★✰ As an almost abstract dance work Until the Lions is outstanding, a spectacular collaboration between dancers, musicians, designers and technicians.
★★★★✰ Now that we are all one more Nutcracker nearer death, as weary critic Richard Buckle used to bemoan, the Royal Ballet has given us a wintry bonne bouche of ballets to savour.
To celebrate 10 year of live relays the Royal Opera House is hosting a Cinema Festival of past works in the newly rebuilt Linbury Studio Theatre. Jann Parry was there for the screening of Ashton's Sylvia (recorded in 2005) and which included Darcey Bussell reminiscing about dancing the lead role...
★★★★✰ Wright's ending is the best ever, preserving the assurance of the Grand pas de deux that the future must surely be blissful.
★★✰✰✰ According to a programme note by the Wang Ramirez duo, they have turned Sawhney's album into 'a fully choreographed show. What will be shown on stage is the result of our interpretation of what has been discussed, researched, felt and exchanged during our meetings.'
★★★✰✰ If The Unknown Soldier is dispiritingly low-key, Wayne McGregor's Infra remains assertively bold...
★★★✰✰ Mark Morris's Layla and Majnun is a music concert with dancing, lamenting a love that cannot be. It's an age-old story, spread across continents and centuries.
Jann Parry talks to the recently promoted Mayara Magri at an important time - she is about to make her debut as Gamzatti in The Royal Ballet's production of La Bayadere - her first major and leading role in the company she joined 6 years ago...
★★★★✰ In the past, the Royal Ballet's version, last performed five years ago, has sometimes seemed insubstantial. Not so this time, with a luxury cast in full dramatic mode: Vadim Muntagirov, Marianela Nuñez, Natalia Osipova and Gary Avis...
★★★✰✰ David Bintley, who steps down as director of Birmingham Royal Ballet at the end of the 2018/2019 season, describes the current double bill as 'two ballets fuelled by power and politics'.
★★★★✰ The partnership in Mayerling between Morera and Bonelli is a fine example of how experience can illumine the nuances of a dramatic ballet.
★★★★✰ Osipova is lethally orgasmic... Never has MacMilllan's choreography for the death duet seemed so astounding as in her account of it.
★★★★✰ Forsythe is surprising himself and his audience with new discoveries of what bodies and ballets can do.