★★✰✰✰ For all Marston’s qualifications, I found her Jane Eyre to be a dreary affair, theatrically dutiful and choreographically thin.
Tag - Jorma Elo
★★★★✰ On the second night the program was offered, Mearns was stunning, but the remaining three pieces, by three different companies were, to varying degrees, engaging, although hers was a tough act to follow.
★★★✰✰ With his latest, The Decalogue, which opened on May 12, Justin Peck seems to have turned a new page...
★★★✰✰ The 10 dancers who graced the Joyce stage represented a powerhouse of talent and technique, on par with some of the best dancers at much larger companies - BalletX is worth checking out.
★★★✰✰ When I think of Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) under David Bintley I think of tradition with a capital T and the latest double bill underlines that in spades.
Just before intermission Simkin included two film-and-performance works by Alexander Ekman. Simkin and the City, which went viral with the Internet-savvy dance crowd a couple of years ago, always gets a good chuckle.
It is almost eight years to the day since The Car Man was last revived at Sadler’s Wells (having premiered in 2000) and it seems even better than I recall...
Boston Ballet closed its season with a generous offering of four ballets spanning almost 70 years... and including a world premiere and two company premieres...
The evening was full of surprises, not least that two of the three choreographers were women and that Jorma Elo broke radically new ground in his Bach Cello Suites...
...the dancers seem able to handle whatever comes their way. It’s a quality that will serve them well in their travels.
Elo's Close to Chuck ...this is a wonderful ballet and, I predict, a permanent addition to the repertory.
This was an evening not to be missed. Newly appointed Artistic Director, José Manuel Carreño, made sure that the quality of the eighteen guest artists for Ballet San Jose’s Gala Performance would tantalise even the most skeptical dance fan.
The first bravo for the Boston Ballet's return to London must go to artistic director Mikko Nissinen, for his clever and highly successful programming for opening night.
Muriel [Maffre] was an inspiration for me because she got so many great roles even though she was tall. After she retired I started to get some of her old parts.
"I think for me the high point is that I don’t see Boston audiences as having any limitations. When I got here everybody was telling me what I couldn’t do and people warned me to play it safe. But I have found people extremely open and willing to explore and I’m really thrilled about that."
But in Sharper, aggressively awkward movements are kept to a minimum: the ugly is reduced, and the residue now acts like a tonic of wit. And for the first time in Elo’s work, at least in my experience, we find a lyricism and beauty so profound they sometimes took my breath away.
...so I will just conclude with noting that another depressing thing about the evening's kitsch-ridden choreography was that it didn't quite obscure the occasional glimmers of brilliance that reminded us that these men are, indeed, among the world's best, despite this tawdry presentation.
What a nice find! A casual Google search, a few weeks ago, led me to a book I’d never heard of but which has turned out to be doubly interesting as well as, already, a source of a lot of pleasure.