★★★★✰ Jann Parry reviews the RB Balanchine and Robbins bill featuring Apollo, Tchaikovsky pas de deux and Dances at a Gathering.
Tag - Alexander Campbell
★★★★★ Thank you, Royal Ballet, for giving so much pleasure in trying times.
★★★★✰ Kevin O'Hare, director of the Royal Ballet, came on stage to welcome the return of a paying audience for what turned out to be the opening and closing live performance of the season...
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 (★★★✰✰)
"If you missed 'Men at the Barre - Inside the Royal Ballet': a look behind the scenes at the male ballet dancers in the company, then do take the time to catch up on BBC iPlayer."
★★★★✰ Osipova inhabits the role of Anna Anderson with gruelling sincerity. She appears deranged from the beginning with close-up camera angles revealing a depth of despair that is tremendously affecting.
★★★✰✰ In The Cellist, Cathy Marston has taken on a challenging subject for her first commission for the Royal Opera House stage: the real-life story of a much-loved musician Jacqueline Du Pré...
Lynette Halewood with some reflections on London dance performances over the last year - the good and the less good...
★★★★✰ The dancing is so enjoyable, the comedy so appealing, that any flaws in the story telling are easily overlooked.
★★★★✰ The Royal Ballet did themselves a lot of good with the last new bill of the season - a one-off celebration of Margot Fonteyn. There was much to be reminded of and be proud of.
★★★✰✰ A very mixed bill... Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Medusa (★★✰✰✰), Christopher Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour (★★★★✰) and Crystal Pite's Flight Pattern (★★★★✰)
★★★★✰ - Royal Ballet School in Liam Scarlett's new Cunning Little Vixen. ★★✰✰✰ - Royal Ballet's Yasmine Naghdi debut in Two Pigeons.
★★★✰✰ If The Unknown Soldier is dispiritingly low-key, Wayne McGregor's Infra remains assertively bold...
★★★★✰ Osipova is lethally orgasmic... Never has MacMilllan's choreography for the death duet seemed so astounding as in her account of it.
Jann Parry talks to The Royal Ballet about what's happening on World Ballet Day this year and just what it means for some of those involved... Kristen McNally, James Hay and Assistant director Anthoula Syndica-Drummond.
★★★★★ 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.
★★★★✰ It's a myth that Kenneth MacMillan's Manon was ever regarded as a failure. Critics may initially have had reservations but audiences have enjoyed it from its first season in 1974 throughout its many revivals...
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ This was indeed a Giselle to treasure as a first encounter with ballet.
★★★★★ Peter Wright's 1985 production for the Royal Ballet has had many interpreters, all subtly or extravagantly different. Nunez is amongst the finest, a perfectionist who seems realistically earthy as a country girl who loves dancing and ethereal as her defiant spirit.