Ballet Icons Gala 2020 – London
★★★★✰ The annual Icons gala provides the chance to see dancers who don’t often appear in London…
Bolshoi Ballet – Giselle (Ratmansky premiere) – Moscow
★★★★✰ This is a Giselle that is both familiar and new. Watching it on opening night was like seeing a faded painting regain its colors.
Bolshoi Ballet – The Bright Stream – London
★★★★★ A wildly surreal comic turn involves a dog riding a bicycle, both cunningly choreographed. He’s actually a tractor driver in disguise, disrupting sexual assignations.
Bolshoi Ballet – Jewels: Emeralds, Rubies, Diamonds – Brisbane
★★★★★ As you would expect Diamonds was the highlight of the three part Jewels.
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…
Russian Ballet Icons Gala 2018 – London
★★★✰✰ This year’s Russian Ballet gala was ostensibly in honour of the 200th anniversary of Marius Petipa’s birth. Any choreography attributed to him was mostly a long way ‘after Petipa’, but it’s always fun to see excellent Russian dancers deliver pas de deux from Don Quixote, Swan Lake and Le Corsaire.
Bolshoi Ballet – The Taming of the Shrew – New York
★★★✰✰ It wouldn’t be a complete exaggeration to say that the Bolshoi’s U.S. premiere of Jean-Christophe Maillot’s The Taming of the Shrew set the Koch Theater on fire Wednesday night…
Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet – Jewels – New York, Lincoln Center Festival
★★★★✰ It’s not often that one gets to see three such companies side by side, or to experience a work as familiar as Jewels with new eyes…
Memorable Performances of 2016 – London
Lynette Halewood with her personal selection of London dance memories from the past year…
2016 National Dance Awards – Announcement of Nominations
The Dance Section of the Critics’ Circle is pleased to announce the nominations for the 17th National Dance Awards,
Bolshoi Ballet – The Flames of Paris – London
★★★★✰ The great pleasure of Alexei Ratmansky’s version of Vasily Vainonen’s 1932 ballet is the cornucopia of steps to which both choreographers had access: danse d’école, folk and character dances, as well as expressive acting.
Bolshoi Ballet – The Taming of the Shrew – London
★★★✰✰ Maillot’s ballet… belongs to Krysanova and Lantratov, who succeed in conveying that Kate and Petruchio are wildly, equally in love, however crassly they treat each other…
Youth America Grand Prix – Gala 2016 – New York
★★✰✰✰ Like all galas, this was quite a mixed bag. Over 200 students trooped on and offstage in a veritable tornado of activity before the veteran YAGP dancers stepped out for the showstopping stuff…
Ave Maya Gala in Memory of Maya Plisetskaya – London
★★★✰✰ Every gala needs a revelation, and this one was provided by Sergio Bernal, a Spanish dancer who dominated the stage in an imperious farruca solo from Antonio’s flamenco version of The Three Cornered Hat…
International Ballet Festival 2015 Dance Open and Tsiskaridze at the Vaganova Academy – St Petersburg
Margaret Willis has just been in St. Petersburg, catching up with the Dance Open Festival and also visiting the Vaganova Academy where she had some words with director Nikolai Tsiskaridze…
Russian Ballet Icons Gala – Dedicated to the History of Russian Ballet – London
The gala opened with the Act III wedding pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty, performed by Ekaterina Osmolkina and Guiseppe Picone. No fish-dives in this version – the Russians regard them as vulgar, and Osmolkina could never be vulgar.
Bolshoi Ballet – Jewels: Emeralds, Rubies, Diamonds – London
The Bolshoi’s glorious rising star, Olga Smirnova, was imperious…
Bolshoi Ballet – The Sleeping Beauty – London
…but the production isn’t so interested in motivation, more in grand effects, and those were delivered. It was a glittering, ostentatious performance, though not one to catch the heart.
Russian Ballet Icons – Nijinsky Gala – London
Though this year it was Nijinsky’s turn to be reclaimed as a Russian icon, the contents of the gala had little to do with him. Very probably the choice of items – mainly pas de deux – depended on which dancers were available to perform whatever was in their repertoire.
