★★★✰✰ With works from Christopher Wheeldon (Within the Golden Hour), Kyle Abraham (Optional Family: a divertissement - a premiere) and Crystal Pite (The Statement & Solo Echo)
Tag - Ezio Bosso
★★★★✰ I had missed SFB’s London season at Sadler’s Wells in 2019, so was pleased to catch up with ballets brought together for this digital triple bill.
★★★★★ Thank you, Royal Ballet, for giving so much pleasure in trying times.
The entire Royal Ballet were back on stage and performing for a live audience last Friday in a gala style show which was/is also streamed. Jann Parry was mightily impressed with the dancing and repertoire (★★★★★) if not so much with the live audience experience in a Covid aware Opera House (★★★✰✰)
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★✰✰ Images has done an excellent job of commissioning appropriate, innovative choreographers, allowing the company to exceed their expectations...
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★✰✰ Snowblind is a great narrative ballet – the source material is striking and Marston’s interpretation of it, equally so.
★★★★✰ The range of roles shows the Royal Ballet dancers, up-and-coming soloist, established principals and character artists, at their very best.
★★★✰✰ Wheeldon’s talents are on display, as well as the Royal Ballet’s dancers. A pity, then, that Strapless has been exposed without previews to sort out its weaknesses.
Great to see so many of San Francisco Ballet’s dancers enjoying themselves and enthusing their audience in a steamy summer evening in Paris.
2 One Another is a totally unapologetic work - powerful and unself-conscious in the way it turns up the volume in design, physicality and sound.
The evening certainly demonstrated the admirable qualities of the SFB dancers: their hard-working, good-humoured, go-for-it approach and the range of different talents in the company. The goodwill they generate in the audience is remarkable. Here’s hoping they come back for a return visit soon.
Aimée Tsao, watching San Francisco Ballet for over 35 years now, with a general primer on the company and some thoughts on the repertoire they are bring to London in September 2012...
True to style, San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director & Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson is showcasing his dancers in a highly varied programme of ten short works – no fewer than nine of them UK premieres – for their long-awaited return to the London stage.