Marquee TV – Summer Shorts festival in association with Screen.dance and the SF Dance Film Festival
★★★★✰ 21 dance films, sourced from all over the globe and presented by Marquee TV in association with Screen.dance (Scotland’s Festival of dance on screen) and San Francisco Dance Film Festival.
Royal Ballet – Woolf Works – streamed archive recording of 2017 performance
★★★✰✰ Wayne McGregor’s first full-length creation for the Royal Ballet, Woolf Works, inspired by Virginia Woolf, remains one of his best works to date.
Royal Opera House/Royal Ballet – Live from Covent Garden: First Concert
★★★✰✰ The first concert was not much of a consolation for all that we have lost. So far, the Royal Ballet appears a token add-on to the opera’s contributions…
The Royal Ballet – The Cellist (premiere), Dances at a Gathering – London
★★★✰✰ In The Cellist, Cathy Marston has taken on a challenging subject for her first commission for the Royal Opera House stage: the real-life story of a much-loved musician Jacqueline Du Pré…
Royal Ballet – Onegin – London
★★★★✰ The ballet works as a conflicted love story centred on the heroine, Tatiana. When Natalia Osipova dances the role, she brings home how Russian the character is.
Some Memorable Performances of 2019 – London
Lynette Halewood with some reflections on London dance performances over the last year – the good and the less good…
Royal Ballet – Coppélia – London
★★★★✰ The dancing is so enjoyable, the comedy so appealing, that any flaws in the story telling are easily overlooked.
Gallery – Francesca Hayward and Gary Avis in a scene from the Royal Ballet’s Coppélia
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
Royal Ballet – The Sleeping Beauty – London
★★★★✰ The Royal Ballet’s current production of The Sleeping Beauty, dating back to 2006, is a homage to Ninette de Valois and her faith that Marius Petipa’s Imperial Russian ballet should be the flagship of her British company.
Royal Ballet – Concerto, Enigma Variations, Raymonda Act III – London
★★★★✰ It is all too easy to assume that the first triple bill of the Royal Ballet’s autumn season celebrates its creative heritage from the 1960s. In fact, two of the ballets were made for other companies…
Royal Ballet – Merce Cunningham celebration: Cross Currents, Monotones II, Everyone Keeps Me – London
★★★★★ Quite some achievement by Pam Tanowitz, to have followed treasured works by Cunningham and Ashton with one that pays homage to both, yet stands on its own as her distinctive tapestry of dance.
Gallery – Royal Ballet Merce Cunningham celebration – works by Cunningham, Ashton and Pam Tanowitz
Featuring works by Merce Cunningham, Frederick Ashton and Pam Tanowitz. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
ROH Young Talent Festival Symposium on Exposure, Access and Opportunity
The Young Talent Festival at London’s Royal Opera House included an important Symposium, hosted by Theresa Ruth Howard, under the title “Exposure, Access and Opportunity: Exploring the Cultural Barriers to Ballet.” Deborah Weiss with a comprehensive report on a stimulating event…
Royal Ballet – Margot Fonteyn, A Celebration – London
★★★★✰ 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.
Gallery – Royal Ballet’s Margot Fonteyn: A Celebration
The Royal Ballet pays tribute to its Prima Ballerina Assoluta, Margot Fonteyn, with a special celebratory performance to mark the centenary of her birth. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
Royal Ballet – The Firebird, A Month in the Country, Symphony in C – London
★★★★✰ Three short but densely packed ballets infused with a strong Russian flavour were at the heart of the Royal Ballet’s last bill of the season.
Merce Cunningham Trust – Night of 100 Solos, Centennial Event – London
★★★★✰ A quote from The Observer’s dance critic, Nigel Gosling, in 1964: ‘Merce Cunningham and his company have burst on the British scene like a bomb …heart-warming proof that here is an art with a future…’
Memorable Performances of 2018 – London
Semperoper Ballett Dresden were another new visitor in the summer, with a programme of Forsythe works, some not seen here before. But Forsythe is a theme this year in himself.
Royal Ballet – Mayerling (Hirano, Osipova) – London
★★★★✰ Osipova is lethally orgasmic… Never has MacMilllan’s choreography for the death duet seemed so astounding as in her account of it.
