...the Ukrainian-born soloist Anastasia Matvienko was a pliant, loose-limbed Cinderella who danced with uninhibited ease and looked perfectly at home in Ratmansky’s goofy interpretation of the character.
Tag - Frederick Ashton
It is the final act that brings out the best in them. Vasiliev is abject, Cojacaru is truly touching, despairing and resolutely resolved to die.
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.
But, for the ballet to work it has to be danced with conviction and joy, and this is what the Mikhailovsky pulls off marvelously well.
The programme was so underwhelming that I went twice in succession, to see whether alternative casts could make a difference.
The word transcendent gets tossed around a lot, overused, especially in the performing arts. But if one performer deserves it at this year's Fall For Dance Festival, it is Aakash Odedra.
Jann Parry reviews Scènes de ballet, Five Brahms Waltzes, Symphonic Variations and A Month in the Country...
Royal Ballet Ashton Bill featuring Scènes de ballet, Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan, Symphonic Variations and A Month in the Country. Gallery by Dave Morgan...
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...
I like McNally's sense of fun but I also like this more serious side because the movement is also fresh and unpredictable. Of all the ballet choreographers coming through I think hers is one of the most original voices.
Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a showy affair...
The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) marked the 60th anniversary of its highest honour – the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award (QEII Award) - by giving it to The Royal Ballet. A good time for DanceTabs to catch up with director Kevin O'Hare and some of his dancers at the awards reception...
Lloyd has written widely on English composers and is meticulous in combing together many fragmentary impressions of Lambert. The book weighs over 1.5 kilos, 419 pages of small print, most heavily annotated in smaller print still, with a further 150 pages of appendices.
"This is how ecstasy is danced." Kimin Kim in Concerto DSCH.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
Viktoria Tereshkina has a warm personality and this enhances her dancing. She has long thin limbs and offers expansive port de bras, while her legs whip up effortlessly but with control.
Who but Frederick Ashton could turn a marital spat into one of the most delightful, touching works in the ballet repertoire? His 1964 The Dream is precisely that...
I was suitably sent home happy.
Few nineteenth-century story ballets are as satisfying as Giselle, with its simple and poetic plot, compact structure and starkly contrasting moods. This week I watched four Giselles, with four distinctly different casts...
To fully enjoy Ashton, one has to be willing to acquiesce to one’s own softer impulses, a sense of wonder and perhaps a little nostalgia, and to surrender the loveliness of small things.