★★★★★ Though the concert was a treat, could the Royal Opera House please try raising our spirits in future streamings, and give the Royal Ballet the prominence it deserves.
Tag - David Vaughan
★★✰✰✰ After viewing Ashton on a bill with works by Ricardo Graziano and Christopher Wheeldon, I’m not worried about Ashton’s relevance nor his resonance with a future audience. ...Both the Graziano and Wheeldon posed some problems from what some might consider a “female” perspective.
★★★★★ It must be tempting to get carried away by sentiment when it comes to celebrating both a 70th birthday and fifty years as a choreographer in a programme that also marks the departure of a special muse.
The Metropolitan Opera in New York staged "Le Rossignol" in December 1981 as part of a programme commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Stravinsky’s birth... the producer was John Dexter. He told Ashton, back in London, that he could choreograph two dancers as the Nightingale and the Fisherman on stage, while the roles would be sung by opera singers in the orchestra pit...
★★★★✰ 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...
The company embraces the turn-of-the-20th-century Cecchetti Method, more concerned with anatomic integrity than with razzle-dazzle. Cecchetti’s motto is “purity of line, simplicity of style.” You get the idea.
ABT's run of Les Sylphides this season are different - after research, the company, under their musical director Ormsby Wilkins, have rediscovered a 1941 orchestration by Benjamin Britten. Marina Harss reveals all in conversation with Wilkins...
Like a Fabergé egg with a tiny golden bird inside, Sylvia is decadent, a bit indulgent, but delightful.
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...