Birmingham Royal Ballet – [Un]leashed: Lyric Pieces, Sense of Time, Peter and the Wolf – London
★★★✰✰ Overall, invigorating; a demonstration of the company’s healthy enthusiasm for innovation and playing with the form…
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Seasons in our World, Peter and the Wolf – Cheltenham
★★★✰✰ Bintley feels strongly about tradition (much more so than most other directors) and the commissions are his way of saying what’s important and passing that baton on.
Carlos Acosta splendidly summed up as he collects his Critics’ Circle Services to the Arts award
I was at the recent Critics’ Circle lunch when Carlos Acosta won his latest award and was struck by Graham Watts citation – it seemed to splendidly sum up Carlos, both the man and his illustrious career… and why exactly we all admire him. BM, Ed.
Russian Ballet Icons Gala 2019 – London
★★★✰✰ The annual Ballet Icons gala, now in its 14th year, aims to promote Russian culture while providing a Sunday evening’s entertainment for Russians in London and ballet-lovers…
Royal Ballet – Don Quixote – London
★★★★★ With Marianela Nunez and Vadim Muntagirov… Theirs was a performance that caught up everyone in the sheer pleasure and excitement of spectacular dancing.
Interview: Mayara Magri, First Soloist, The Royal Ballet
Jann Parry talks to the recently promoted Mayara Magri at an important time – she is about to make her debut as Gamzatti in The Royal Ballet’s production of La Bayadere – her first major and leading role in the company she joined 6 years ago…
Carlos Acosta and Acosta Danza – Carlos Acosta: A Celebration bill – London
★★★✰✰ There was a lot here to enjoy. This may have been a celebration of three decades in dance, but there was no nostalgia here…
Carlos Acosta – Dancer, Directer, Choreographer: ‘I am a man on a mission – I always have been’
“That’s what it’s always been about for me – the necessity to connect with an audience and express myself.”
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.
MacMillan Celebrations – The Judas Tree (RB), The Song of the Earth (ENB) – London
★★★★✰ The second programme commemorating the 25th anniversary of Kenneth MacMillan’s death revealed his very different responses to music, and to human nature.
Acosta Danza – Debut bill – London
★★★✰✰ Belles-Lettres – a piece by NYCB’s Justin Peck, reworked for Acosta Danza – is a sweepingly pretty pieces for nine dancers, all floaty, gorgeous frocks and increasingly impassioned duets…
Russian Ballet Icons Gala – In the steps of the Ballets Russes – London
★★★★✰ The long gala (three and a half hours with one interval) was well organised, with no speeches and no protracted curtain calls.
Memorable Performances of 2016 – London
Lynette Halewood with her personal selection of London dance memories from the past year…
Carlos Acosta – The Classical Farewell – London
★★★★✰ “Thank you, Carlos,” boomed one audience member as Acosta ended his performance by changing out of his dance gear, sitting meditatively on stage…
Gallery – Carlos Acosta in Don Quixote pas de deux
Part of Carlos Acosta’s “Classical Farewell” bill at the Royal Albert Hall. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
Book – Peter Wright: Wrights and Wrongs – my life in dance
His is an insider’s account, complete with waspish comments and cameos of the famous people he encountered…
St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre with Irina Kolesnikova – Her Name Was Carmen – London
★★✰✰✰ Carmen ought to be an amazing role for a ballerina, up there with Swan Lake for presenting an opportunity to show lots of different characters in one…
Carlos Acosta at IDFB – A Classical Farewell – Birmingham
★★★★✰ Winks, finger wags, flamboyant leaps in a criminally short leather skirt – Carlos Acosta gives the people what they want in this winsome bill, a mix of variations he’s assembled to mark his retirement after more than 25 years on stage.
Royal Ballet – Elizabeth – London
reciting, along with modern bits of exposition to keep the audience informed of who’s who. Tuckett’s movement language is similarly diverse…
