★★★★✰ Rojo has achieved an excellent feat of artistic engineering; creating a fully-functioning, enjoyable new model out of a redundant artefact.
Tag - Marius Petipa
★★★✰✰ The Washington Ballet new program titled Balanchine + Ashton showcased four works by the two great choreographers, who “forever shaped our art form,” as the company’s artistic director, Julie Kent, put it in her opening remarks.
★★★★✰ I saw two performances; each of them demonstrated why Giselle is still so popular even 180 years after the ballet’s premiere.
★★★★✰ There was always something new around the corner, a surprising shape, a witty step, an unlikely transition. It’s clear that Ratmansky felt liberated by the unusual structure and soundscape...
I don’t really believe in lists, but it’s admittedly fun to look back over the year and reflect on moments that have stayed with me. So here they are, in no particular order…
★★★★✰ The dancing is so enjoyable, the comedy so appealing, that any flaws in the story telling are easily overlooked.
★★★★✰ This is a Giselle that is both familiar and new. Watching it on opening night was like seeing a faded painting regain its colors.
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ the Mariinsky’s production was a welcome ravishment of vibrant costumes, shimmering jewels, romantic storytelling and sheer entertainment...
★★★✰✰ This three-act three-hour-long Paquita is a brainchild of Smekalov, who is a second soloist with the company. He wrote his own libretto, largely borrowing from the Cervantes novella La Gitanilla...
★★★★✰ The reason the Bolshoi's Don Quixote is so enjoyable is the gusto with which it is performed. It doesn't aim to be remotely authentically Spanish or even respectful of the original 1869 version...
★★★★✰ This production proposes that Sleeping Beauty is not really the story of a love quest – as it’s often depicted – but rather a fable about order and disorder, harmony and disharmony, the balance between good and evil.
★★★★✰ It’s impossible not to be impressed by the range of these works, from introspective and conversational (Symposium) to brilliantly classical (The Seasons) to dramatic (Dnieper).
★★★★★ To my eye, this Harlequinade may be the most well-rounded of Ratmansky's historically-minded stagings of Petipa.
Marina Harss talks to a legend about another legend and the greatest classical choreographer of them all - Marius Petipa. Full of interesting insights...
★★★★✰ In the last several years, the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky has developed a sideline to his main choreographic efforts: the reviving of ballets by Marius Petipa in a way that represents the original choreography with as much fidelity as possible...
★★★★✰ Devon Teuscher has done her time, and the results are breathtaking...
★★★✰✰ But, at least to my eye, the production’s triumph is its final lakeside act. There, the formations of swans, as originally choreographed by Lev Ivanov, become intricate, delicate, lyrical, and intensely moving.
The occasion was the 15th anniversary of the Ekaterina Maximova Arabesque Ballet Competition named, since 2012, after the late and much-loved Bolshoi ballerina, and organised by her husband, Vladimir Vasiliev...
★★★✰✰ Since its creation 140 years ago, La Bayadѐre has been one of the Mariinsky Ballet’s calling cards and the Russian company can make this enduring classic shine in all its stylistic glory and theatrical splendor.