★★★★✰ Wright's ending is the best ever, preserving the assurance of the Grand pas de deux that the future must surely be blissful.
Tag - Gary Avis
★★★★✰ In the past, the Royal Ballet's version, last performed five years ago, has sometimes seemed insubstantial. Not so this time, with a luxury cast in full dramatic mode: Vadim Muntagirov, Marianela Nuñez, Natalia Osipova and Gary Avis...
★★★★✰ Osipova is lethally orgasmic... Never has MacMilllan's choreography for the death duet seemed so astounding as in her account of it.
★★★★✰ The ostensible link between the three works in this mixed bill is that they are by the Royal Ballet's resident choreographers, past and present: Frederick Ashton. Kenneth MacMillan and Wayne McGregor. But none is typical of the choreographers' work...
★★★★✰ It's a myth that Kenneth MacMillan's Manon was ever regarded as a failure. Critics may initially have had reservations but audiences have enjoyed it from its first season in 1974 throughout its many revivals...
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...
★★★★★ When Peter Wright’s production of The Nutcracker for the Royal Ballet was given its premiere on 20th December 1984, gala guests were treated to free champagne and souvenir booklets. No expense was spared...
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★✰✰ Wheeldon and his scenarist, Nicholas Wright, have made theatrical sense of a nonsensical children’s classic. This Alice, though, is a modern pantomime, not a classic ballet.
★★★★✰ In Marguerite and Armand the 3 casts reviewed are Zenaida Yanowsky and Roberto Bolle, Alessandra Ferri and Federico Bonelli, Natalia Osipova and Valdimir Shklyarov.
★★★★★ Edward Watson and Steven McRae casts both reviewed. "...the Royal Ballet is doing MacMillan proud, coming up to the 25th anniversary of his death..."
★★★★★ The Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker has undergone various changes since its gala premiere in 1984, not least in the central roles of Clara and Drosselmeyer...
★★★★✰ Early arrivals for the opening night of the Royal Ballet’s autumn season could watch Peregrine the pony being escorted to the stage door in readiness for his role in La Fille mal gardée...
★★★✰✰ 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...
★★★★✰ The range of roles shows the Royal Ballet dancers, up-and-coming soloist, established principals and character artists, at their very best.
Gallery by Dave Morgan...
Led by Gary Avis and a Royal Ballet all-star cast, the company will perform an especially created programme of Royal Ballet classics, hosted by BBC Strictly Come Dancing’s Anton du Beke.
Lynette Halewood with her personal selection of London dance memories this last year…
This Nutcracker production has the best conclusion of any...
...a production that continues to set the standard against which later versions are measured.