Shanghai Ballet – Swan Lake – New York
★★★★✰ It’s comforting to know that at even my advanced age I can still be confounded even by hoary old Swan Lake.
Annette Page: Tribute to a Ballerina
This programme celebrated Annette Page’s career with the Royal Ballet and supported the Motor Neurone Disease Association. She died at the age of 84 of MND, a cruel disease for a former dancer and an articulate, witty woman…
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (Trocks) – Les Sylphides bill – London
★★★★✰ The curtain calls for Robert Carter’s “Dying Swan” are nearly as long as the ballet itself and just as funny.
Raffaele Morra – Ballet Master and Rehearsal Director, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
Next month – September – The Trocks open their 2018 UK tour which runs through to November and covers many towns and cities across the land. A good primer on all things Trockadero as Diane Parkes speaks to Raffaele Morra, whose been with the company these last 17 years…
Les Etés de la Danse, Paris – Homage to Jerome Robbins, Programme 1 – New York City Ballet, Joffrey Ballet
★★★★✰ The programme, performed by two very different American ballet companies, displayed Robbins’s versatility while revealing the similarities in his approach to music.
Australian Ballet – Murphy (Graeme Murphy tribute bill of 6 works) – Sydney
★★★✰✰ Within this potpourri of Graeme Murphy’s works, the highlight was “Grand”, a charming and poignant tribute he created in 2005 for his mother, a pianist, who died the previous year.
New Adventures – Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes – New York
★★★★✰ It’s always exciting to discover a new side of an artist. For this, and for an immensely entertaining show, we have to thank Matthew Bourne.
Washington Ballet – Les Sylphides, Le Corsaire pdd, Bolero, Prodigal Son – Washington
★★★★✰ It was a pleasure to see this company in such a smart and wide-ranging program. It was even more rewarding to see the Washington Ballet dancers masterly navigating the numerous challenges…
Royal Ballet School – Annual Main Stage Performance 2017 – London
★★★★✰ It was a well-balanced programme, featuring different kinds of discipline for future corps de ballet dancers, and honouring veteran choreographers as well as contemporary ones.
Washington Ballet – Lilac Garden, The Dream, Frontier (premiere) – Washington
★★★✰✰ Ethan Stiefel’s Frontier, his first significant commission, had all the right ingredients… Yet the ballet, with its space travel theme, didn’t leave much of an impression…
Miami City Ballet – The Fairy’s Kiss, Walpurgisnacht Ballet, Polyphonia – Miami
★★★★✰ The Fairy’s Kiss (Ratmansky premiere): The final image is poetic, grand, inspiring. It takes one’s breath away.
New Adventures – Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes – London
★★★✰✰ If you remember the 1948 film, the plot is easy to follow. If you don’t, and can’t pick up the references to ballets, a printed scenario would be helpful, as would job-descriptions of the characters…
Sagraçamba: The Rite in Rio
Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer first put their reconstruction of “The Rite of Spring” on Rio de Janeiro Ballet in 1995. This year they went back to put it on again – this is what happened…
Boston Ballet – Thrill of Contact: Theme and Variations, The Concert, The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, fremd – Boston
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…
American Ballet Theatre – Les Sylphides, Pillar of Fire, Fancy Free, Theme and Variations – New York
There are times when a dance lover just can’t believe her good fortune and one of those times comes around once a year in New York…
Book – The Making of Markova – by Tina Sutton
Sutton was originally asked to write a brief account of Markova’s career for the Gotlieb Centre but soon realised that her subject’s life, personal and public, was so fascinating that she undertook a substantial biography
The Work of Mikhail Fokine – Q&A with Isabelle Fokine
Born in Paris in 1958, Isabelle Fokine is the daughter of Vitale Fokine and granddaughter of choreographer Mikhail Fokine. She is artistic director of the Fokine Estate Archive, which holds the worldwide copyright to his work.
Mariinsky Ballet – Mikhail Fokine bill: Chopiniana, The Firebird, Scheherazade – St. Petersburg
The corps (in Chopiniana) must be congratulated for the ball-bearing precision in their soft gentle boureeing, gliding gently back to their original positions as the music ended. A real treat to see it done so beautifully.
Ballet San Jose – 2013 Benefit Gala – San Jose
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.
Ormsby Wilkins – Britten’s Sylphs and other Musical Questions for ABT’s Music Director
ABT’s run of Les Sylphides this season are different – after research, the company, under their musical director Ormsby Wilkins, have rediscovered a 1941 orchestration by Benjamin Britten. Marina Harss reveals all in conversation with Wilkins…
