Staatsballett Berlin – La Bayadère (premiere of Ratmansky reconstruction) – Berlin
★★★★✰ In the last several years, the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky has developed a sideline to his main choreographic efforts: the reviving of ballets by Marius Petipa in a way that represents the original choreography with as much fidelity as possible…
World Ballet Day, 2 October 2018 – an insight into what The Royal Ballet will be doing
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.
Natalia Osipova – Pure Dance – London
★★★✰✰ No trade description problems, here. This was exactly what it said on the tin: Natalia Osipova performing pure dance, enhanced only by recorded music and lighting designs varying from the merest of subtle tints to an explosion of floodlights…
St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre – Swan Lake – London
★★✰✰✰ Although the first night audience was moved to a standing ovation, Swan Lake can and should be so much more than this stylised ritual…
Natalia Osipova – ISADORA: A Tribute to Isadora Duncan in Two Acts (world premiere) – Costa Mesa
★★★✰✰ Half-narrative and semi-abstract, ISADORA hop-skips through the dancer’s life; it’s described in the program notes as a “freely interpreted biography,” and it cherry-picks around unsavory elements…
American Ballet Theatre – 3 Bills: Giselle, Gala, Firebird/Afterite – New York
★★★★✰ After a week of Giselle, during which Natalia Osipova and David Hallberg had their much-awaited re-match, the company began its season in earnest on May 21, with a spring gala that included two new works and excerpts from a third…
Interview: Melissa Hamilton, First Soloist, The Royal Ballet
“I knew that I had to seize my only chance to have a ballet career. Masha Mukhamedov agreed to teach me privately six days a week for ten months…”
Russian Ballet Icons Gala 2018 – London
★★★✰✰ This year’s Russian Ballet gala was ostensibly in honour of the 200th anniversary of Marius Petipa’s birth. Any choreography attributed to him was mostly a long way ‘after Petipa’, but it’s always fun to see excellent Russian dancers deliver pas de deux from Don Quixote, Swan Lake and Le Corsaire.
Washington Ballet – Romeo and Juliet – Washington
★★★✰✰ A strikingly beautiful ballerina, with a lissome body and expressive features, EunWon Lee is an ideal Juliet…
Les Ballets de Monte – The Taming of the Shrew – Monte Carlo
★★★★✰ Maillot’s work is generally replete with a sense of irony and eroticism and Shakespeare gave him enormous scope for both!
Dipping in to the 8th International Festival of Arts ‘Diaghilev. P.S.’ in St. Petersburg
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.
Yacobson Ballet – Don Quixote – St. Petersburg
★★★★✰ Kobborg has deconstructed the work; mixing up the narrative’s building blocks before reassembling them in a masterpiece of balance that remains recognisably traditional but is also refreshingly new.
Memorable Performances of 2017 – New York
Six Performances That Stayed with Me in 2017 – Marina Harss with her personal selection of New York dance memories this last year.
Project Polunin – Satori, First Solo, Scriabiniana – London
★★✰✰✰ In truth Polunin’s latest show at the London Coliseum, although it has its moments, isn’t such a great advertisement for him as a dancer or as a creative mixer of the ballet pot.
Sergei Polunin – Dancer, Choreographer & Actor – on his new London show and life…
On the eve of his new London show, which includes two premieres and a rarely seen piece of early Russian contemporary ballet, we catch up with Polunin about the shows and life in general. He’s clearly a man who wants to leave his mark…
Royal Ballet – Sylvia – London
★★★★✰ Sylvia makes a welcome return to the repertoire, reacquainting dancers and audiences with Ashton’s sensibility and complex choreography. It’s a joy but not a masterpiece, as he well knew…
Svetlana Zakharova – Amore: Francesca da Rimini, Rain before it Falls, Strokes Through the Tail – London
★★★✰✰ 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.
American Ballet Theatre – Her Notes, Symphonic Variations, Other Dances, Serenade After Plato’s Symposium – New York
★★★✰✰ The program opened and closed with the most recent works: Jessica Lang’s Her Notes and Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium. Both premiered at ABT in 2016, and both are works whose inspiration largely comes from their scores.
Patrick de Bana, Choreographer, on creativity and working with Svetlana Zakharova
“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.
