Feature - The Royal Ballet School recently danced a 'lost' Ninette de Valois ballet, "The Arts of the Theatre", reconstructed by Anna Meadmore. Jann Parry with a full report on an interesting excavation of the early days of British ballet.
Tag - Ballets Russes
★★★★✰ Balanchine's "Prodigal Son", staring Daniel Ulbricht and Teresa Reichlen, has just been streamed by NYCB - Jann Parry, who also watched the recent Inside NYCB coaching video of 'Prodigal', puts an important work in context...
★★★★★ ...this revival of The Red Shoes, coming with a number of tweaks, appears even tighter and slicker than the original.
★★★✰✰ Stunning images of Bolshoi ballerina Svetlana Zakahrova dressed as Coco Chanel whetted the appetite for the London Premiere of her latest how, Modanse.
★★★★✰ This is a Giselle that is both familiar and new. Watching it on opening night was like seeing a faded painting regain its colors.
Although Valerie Lawson's context is wide-ranging, she brings individuals into focus with personal details, shining a spotlight onto their roles in Australian dance history. Lavishly illustrated with photographs from Australian archives, her book gives vivid life to long-gone personalities.
★★★★✰ This production proposes that Sleeping Beauty is not really the story of a love quest – as it’s often depicted – but rather a fable about order and disorder, harmony and disharmony, the balance between good and evil.
★★★✰✰ Liebeslieder Walzer is one of the most precious of all Balanchine’s ballets; within its fifty-minute span it seems to contain a world of emotion, both profound and infinitely civilized.
★★★★✰ For a very short while, Wim Vanlessen will enjoy the claim that he has performed for the Royal Ballet Flanders for more than half its existence. The company celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, later this year and Vanlessen joined in 1994. This performance was both a celebration of exceptional long service and a farewell...
★★★✰✰ Within this potpourri of Graeme Murphy’s works, the highlight was "Grand", a charming and poignant tribute he created in 2005 for his mother, a pianist, who died the previous year.
★★★★★ Ballet de Lorraine have reconstructed Relâche, a fascinating work first performed by the Ballets Suédois in 1924-25. It had caused almost as great a scandal as the 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring in the same Théâtre des Champs-Elysées...
The aim of the annual festival is to celebrate Russian influence in international culture, thanks to Diaghilev’s productions in the first two decades of the 20th century... St Petersburg also wants to boost its reputation as ‘a great forum of the arts’, introducing contemporary creations from different nations to Russian audiences.
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...
★★★✰✰ Happy for Zakharova who ultimately curated an interesting night, very happy to see her retinue of Bolshoi dancers and happy to see Donlon provide such final good cheer.
★★★★✰ It’s always exciting to discover a new side of an artist. For this, and for an immensely entertaining show, we have to thank Matthew Bourne.
★★★★✰ It was a pleasure to see this company in such a smart and wide-ranging program. It was even more rewarding to see the Washington Ballet dancers masterly navigating the numerous challenges...
"It’s like a game of tennis – I hit the ball and she returns it.". Margaret Willis catches up with choreographer Patrick de Bana to talk about his choroegraphic life and latest project - contributing to Svetlana Zakharova's show Amore - which tours to the UK in November.
★★★✰✰ At New York City Ballet, the fall fashion gala has become a showcase for work by young choreographers. Each one is paired up with a fashion designer and voilà, it’s an event.
★★★★✰ It was a well-balanced programme, featuring different kinds of discipline for future corps de ballet dancers, and honouring veteran choreographers as well as contemporary ones.
★★★★✰ The long gala (three and a half hours with one interval) was well organised, with no speeches and no protracted curtain calls.