★★★★✰ 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.
Tag - Daphnis and Chloe
★★★★★ The Trocks' version of Swan Lake (or Lac, as it used to be known) restores some Soviet era removals. Benno, the hero's best friend and supporter, is back, as are mime sequences, mostly mystifying the participants...
★★★★✰ 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...
★★✰✰✰ Bintley’s ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café saves a dispiriting evening by providing nimble demi-character dancing with a timely message, first delivered nearly 20 years ago.
★★★✰✰ The choreographer and L.A. Dance Project director Benjamin Millepied is a mover and a shaker, a clever curator, a man of taste, a force in the dance world. But is he good choreographer?
★★★★✰ Jessica Lang's Her Notes is a lovely and poetic work, though one with a slightly subdued effect. It is almost too tasteful.
★★★★✰ A second look at Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium confirms the impression formed last season. It is a fascinating work that represents a new direction for the choreographer.
David Drew, for 56 years a member of The Royal Ballet, has died after a long battle with illness. He described himself as one of a ‘bridge generation’ of dancers. The longevity of his career meant that he worked with many figures from the Ballets Russees – but also taught many dancers and choreographers working today.
The National Ballet of China dancers are beautifully trained, surprisingly tall, willowy – even the men – and delicately featured.
As in his narrative ballets, Wheeldon crams in too many ideas. What he does supremely well is to convey emotions beyond words in his pas de deux and solos.
As The Royal Ballet prepares to celebrate Frederick Ashton with an all Ashton quad bill, two other events have also been celebrating the work of the Royal Ballet's founder choreographer...
Born in Paris in 1958, Isabelle Fokine is the daughter of Vitale Fokine and granddaughter of choreographer Mikhail Fokine. She is artistic director of the Fokine Estate Archive, which holds the worldwide copyright to his work.
John Craxton, the celebrated designer of Frederick Ashton’s Daphnis and Chloe, is the subject of an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge...
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...
On the eve of the Clive Barnes Foundation announcing its annual awards we interview Valerie Taylor-Barnes, the great critics widow, about her life in dance (including the Royal Ballet) and the work of the Foundation...
My nickname in BRB used to be Bastard - and something happened with Ballet Hoo! - I don't know whether it's my age, or the kids we worked with, but it made me realise that you can get the best out of dancers and students by coming in on a certain level and talking to them on a certain level - not always shouting. I do shout still, I do get very angry...
...the evening really belonged to Robert Parker, giving his last performance in London and challenging memories of almost any of his predecessors. Whilst being very, very charming he also has some of the toughness which I think Ashton originally intended, and the sincerity of his regret at the end was entirely convincing. He will be sadly missed.
Not Trusting to Fate - The Frederick Ashton Foundation’s avowed purpose is to perpetuate the choreographer’s legacy. But to do so, it needs the co-operation of those to whom Ashton willed his ballets...