BBC, Artangel and Sadler’s Wells – Jonathan Glazer’s Strasbourg 1518, featuring Pina Bausch dancers
★★✰✰✰ Strasbourg 1518 has been lauded as ‘head buttingly confrontational’ and an original ‘dance for today’. It isn’t. Familiar Bausch tropes don’t really reflect 1518’s psychogenic mania, which was communal, or today’s experience of isolation, stress and tedium.
English National Ballet – Cinderella – streamed archive recording of 2019 performance
★★★✰✰ Wheeldon has woven a lot of narrative threads into his ballet spectacular.
Royal Opera House/Royal Ballet – Live from Covent Garden: Third Concert (27 June)
★★★★✰ The singers had the lions’ share of the concert, with just two pas de deux by Royal Ballet couples, Matthew Ball and Mayara Magri, Reece Clarke and Fumi Kaneko.
Joffrey Ballet – Commedia, Bliss!, Beyond the Shore, The Times Are Racing – San Fransisco
★★★✰✰ The Joffrey Ballet brought a program of four diverse works. Peck’s Times was a hit as was Christopher Wheeldon’s Commedia. The other two works weren’t misses per se…
New York City Ballet – Classic NYCB II bill with new Justin Peck – New York
★★★✰✰ In the last week of its winter season, New York City Ballet unveiled a new work by its resident choreographer, Justin Peck, to a score by the popular neo-Minimalist composer Nico Muhly. It was a homecoming of sorts for Peck…
San Francisco Ballet – Program 2, Classical Re(Vision) bill – San Francisco
★★★★✰ San Francisco Ballet’s Program 2 was dubbed Classical Re(Vision) – a remembering of and reconnection with choreography in SFB’s existing repertory catalogue.
New York City Ballet – Voices (new Ratmansky), and New Combinations bill – New York
★★★★✰ There was always something new around the corner, a surprising shape, a witty step, an unlikely transition. It’s clear that Ratmansky felt liberated by the unusual structure and soundscape…
San Francisco Ballet – Opening Night Gala – San Francisco
★★★★✰ ‘Spellbound’ delivered in every regard – opulent grandeur, terrific people watching and above all, marvelous dance.
New York City Ballet – Fall Fashion Gala with The Shaded Line, Lineage, Symphony in C – New York
★★★✰✰ Kudos to Lovette for really going out on a limb… The Shaded Line feels truly her own, and it’s clear that she has much to say about her chosen profession…
Royal Ballet dancers at the Joyce Ballet Festival – Program A, An Evening of Solos and Duets – New York
★★★✰✰ Program A consisted of a string of solos and duets representing a slice of the company’s choreographic trajectory, from Frederick Ashton through Kenneth MacMillan to Liam Scarlett, Wayne McGregor, and Charlotte Edmonds.
Norwegian National Ballet 2 – ROH, Young Talent Festival, Quint Bill – London
★★★✰✰ Norwegian National Ballet 2 at the ROH Young Talent Festival with 5 works – Departures, Valse-Fantaisie, Pas de Sept from A Folk Tale, Some See Stages, Left from Write
San Francisco Ballet – Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem, Bound To, Anima Animus – London
★★★★✰ It’s been a treat to see so much new work made specifically for a company. The dancers are free, unburdened by the weight of history and expectation, with no comparisons to be made to famous past performers or interpretations. It’s all theirs.
English National Ballet – Cinderella – London
★★★★✰ A spectacular show, full of colour, humour and romance…
Royal Ballet – Within the Golden Hour, Medusa, Flight Pattern – London
★★★✰✰ A very mixed bill… Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Medusa (★★✰✰✰), Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour (★★★★✰) and Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern (★★★★✰)
Gallery – Royal Ballet in Medusa, Within the Golden Hour, Flight Pattern
Works by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Christopher Wheeldon and Crystal Pite. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
5 Questions to choreographer Ruth Brill, about to unveil ‘Peter & The Wolf’ for Birmingham Royal Ballet
We quickly catch up with choreographer Ruth Brill about her latest work for BRB, how she creates and what else she is up to… she’s a busy bee!
Jasper Conran, designer, on working in ballet with David Bintley and now Christopher Wheeldon
Jasper Conran is producing new designs for Christopher Wheeldon’s “Within the Golden Hour”, to be premiered by the Royal Ballet on the 8 May 2019. Jann Parry talks to Conran about the designs and his earlier and extensive work for David Bintley at Birmingham Royal Ballet…
San Francisco Ballet – Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem, Bound To, “…two united in a single soul…” – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Program 5, titled Lyric Voices, welcomed back Trey McIntyre’s Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem and Christopher Wheeldon’s Bound To and the new work came from Yuri Possokhov…
BalletBoyz – Them/Us – London
★★★★✰ There’s lots to savour in this burst of creative expression from the present crop of Boyz.
New York City Ballet – Prodigal Son, Liebeslieder Walzer – New York
★★★✰✰ 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.
