Both the Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet are opening their 2021/22 seasons with the same ballet - Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet. Jann Parry takes a look at how one of the most admired narrative ballets of the 20th century came to be and details of the many dancing debuts we can look forward to...
Tag - BalletBoyz
★★★★✰ 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...
★★★★★ Choreographers (Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Didy Veldman, Andrew McNicol) and performers are providing us with amazing records of what they can achieve in the strangest of times.
★★★★✰ The recording reveals how unusual the choreography is, as it was in 1965... Dancers in pointe shoes have to adapt to flexed feet, flat-footed parallel positions, torsos bent forward, elbows and wrists held at angles.
★★★★✰ Deluxe by BalletBoyz can be seen online on Sadler’s Wells Facebook Premieres from Friday 27 March, 7.30pm for one week only, and upcoming on BBC Four for BBC Culture in Quarantine (date tba).
Lynette Halewood with some reflections on London dance performances over the last year - the good and the less good...
★★★★✰ A spectacular show, full of colour, humour and romance...
★★★★✰ There’s lots to savour in this burst of creative expression from the present crop of Boyz.
The BalletBoyz latest double bill features new work by Christopher Wheeldon and a piece devised by the company dancers themselves. We have pictures from the studio and, hot off the press, some final production shots...
★★★✰✰ Strangely neither the Arnott website or the programme highlight or say much about why the company is all female. I'm not against single-sex companies and the BalletBoyz show how effective it can be... but it seems too restrictive a vision here.
★★★★✰ Duet, the new work for Maliphant and Fouras closes the programme. This has a surprisingly eclectic soundtrack. After bursts of static as if from a radio, a vintage recording of Una furtive lacrima tenderly sung by Caruso...
Some dance can be really thought provoking and that seems to have been the case with Tero Saarinen's "Morphed" - at least for Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer who recently caught up with the work at the Joyce in New York.
★★★★✰ Michael Nunn and Billy Trevitt’s all-male company are on sparkling form right now.
We talk to Emma Maguire about the Gala that honours the life of her mum, Ann Maguire, and this year takes place at the Leeds Grand Theatre on 3 September. The proceeds go to support the Ann Maguire Arts Education Fund - inspiring young people through the arts...
Lynette Halewood with her personal selection of London dance memories from the past year...
★★★✰✰ A piece of dance that takes Moby-Dick as its inspiration has to be worth seeing. Lynette Halewood at The Place in London to see "Leviathan" performed by James Wilton Dance...
★★★★✰ Having missed the opening night of the BalletBoyz tour, at Sadler’s Wells, a few weeks ago, I caught up with it, just three bus stops away from my home...
★★★★✰ Michael Nunn and William Trevitt never fail to surprise: this latest double-bill for their ten-strong all-male dance company is a case in point.
The latest bill with works by Javier De Frutos and Pontus Lidberg. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
It sounds like a great combination, and had some stunning moments, but turned out to be an oddly uneven experience in the theatre...