★★★★✰ Francesca Hayward is entirely believable as a very young Juliet, overwhelmed by her first experience of falling in love.
Tag - Christopher Saunders
★★★★✰ Osipova inhabits the role of Anna Anderson with gruelling sincerity. She appears deranged from the beginning with close-up camera angles revealing a depth of despair that is tremendously affecting.
★★★★✰ The Royal Ballet's current production of The Sleeping Beauty, dating back to 2006, is a homage to Ninette de Valois and her faith that Marius Petipa's Imperial Russian ballet should be the flagship of her British company.
★★★★✰ It is all too easy to assume that the first triple bill of the Royal Ballet's autumn season celebrates its creative heritage from the 1960s. In fact, two of the ballets were made for other companies...
★★★✰✰ Somehow, still at the start of the run, the production seems sanitised, nicely 'English' in spite of Nicholas Georgiadis's imposing Italian Renaissance sets and costumes. Different casts yet to come might bring fresh discoveries...
★★★★★ With Marianela Nunez and Vadim Muntagirov... Theirs was a performance that caught up everyone in the sheer pleasure and excitement of spectacular dancing.
★★★★✰ Now that we are all one more Nutcracker nearer death, as weary critic Richard Buckle used to bemoan, the Royal Ballet has given us a wintry bonne bouche of ballets to savour.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ Wright's ending is the best ever, preserving the assurance of the Grand pas de deux that the future must surely be blissful.
★★★★✰ The ostensible link between the three works in this mixed bill is that they are by the Royal Ballet's resident choreographers, past and present: Frederick Ashton. Kenneth MacMillan and Wayne McGregor. But none is typical of the choreographers' work...
★★★★✰ It's a myth that Kenneth MacMillan's Manon was ever regarded as a failure. Critics may initially have had reservations but audiences have enjoyed it from its first season in 1974 throughout its many revivals...
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ In Marguerite and Armand the 3 casts reviewed are Zenaida Yanowsky and Roberto Bolle, Alessandra Ferri and Federico Bonelli, Natalia Osipova and Valdimir Shklyarov.
★★★★★ Edward Watson and Steven McRae casts both reviewed. "...the Royal Ballet is doing MacMillan proud, coming up to the 25th anniversary of his death..."
...a production that continues to set the standard against which later versions are measured.
At 42, Acosta is still a powerful presence. A much-loved artist around the world, he is undoubtedly one of the greatest male dancers of his generation.
Jann Parry talks to Laura Morera and Vadim Muntagirov about all things La Fille mal gardée and a few other things too...
Jann Parry reviews Scènes de ballet, Five Brahms Waltzes, Symphonic Variations and A Month in the Country...
Gallery by Dave Morgan...
Another December, another Royal Ballet Nutcracker: anything new to report? Not much, no. And for once that's probably the answer most people are hoping to hear...