★★★✰✰ The Washington Ballet new program titled Balanchine + Ashton showcased four works by the two great choreographers, who “forever shaped our art form,” as the company’s artistic director, Julie Kent, put it in her opening remarks.
Tag - Birthday Offering
★★★★✰ 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.
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...
After the long famine, Ashton’s ballets made a welcome return this week with the company’s triple bill under the umbrella title, The Dream.
Both as a tribute to Ashton and as a coming-out party, it’s hard to imagine how the festival could have gone better. The ballets are in good hands.
Rawsthorne was painted by André Derain and Pablo Picasso, and later by Francis Bacon. She was the inspiration for Alberto Giacometti’s etiolated sculptures of walking figures...
What would he himself make of this book, I wonder? He'd be amazed, I should think, by the amount of detail he'd find, and possibly surprised by some of it...
And in the next act she (Nunez) did just that, giving us one of the best Odiles I remember seeing. She looked as if bamboozling innocently trusting princes was her favourite thing in the world, the most fun she’d ever had...
It is a fine selection which illustrates the variety of the Royal’s heritage works, which must beg the question how well are they are danced now...
36 pictures by Dave Morgan...
The exhibition ‘Monica Mason: A Life With The Royal Ballet‘ opened in February, but only last week did I see it properly – at a private view, which also happily involved some speeches and a party with a lot of old friends and colleagues of Monica Mason. A privilege to be there and nice to have free run of the house and the time to stand and stare at some scrummy pictures...
Monica Mason has had a unique career with The Royal Ballet, having worked with every previous Director of the Company. As her final Season as Director of The Royal Ballet begins to draw to a close, the Royal Opera House Collections Spring/Summer 2012 exhibition examines and celebrates her 54 years with the Company.