Jann Parry with some thoughts on the Darcey Bussell gala to raise funds for British Ballet and featuring Ballet Black, Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, New Adventures, Northern Ballet, Rambert2, Scottish Ballet and The Royal Ballet.
Tag - Max Richter
★★★★✰ Amy Pearl really connected with Yoann Bourgeois’ upside down dream world, if the livestream experience itself was not always so brilliant.
★★★★✰ / ★★★★★ If there have been better examples of substantial dance films made during these trying times then I have yet to see them.
★★★★★ Choreographers (Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Didy Veldman, Andrew McNicol) and performers are providing us with amazing records of what they can achieve in the strangest of times.
★★★✰✰ Wayne McGregor’s first full-length creation for the Royal Ballet, Woolf Works, inspired by Virginia Woolf, remains one of his best works to date.
★★★✰✰ The works offer strong contrasts between the traditional story-telling strength of Northern Ballet and more abstract thematic dance.
★★★★✰ Royal Ballet School at the ROH Young Talent Festival with a mixed bill of over 10, new and old works...
★★★★✰ By swelling the numbers of her small touring company, Yolande Yorke-Edgell was able to mount a revival of Kenneth MacMillan's Playground and a 10-strong ensemble for Robert Cohan's Communion. The programme also included new works by Sophia Stoller and Yorke-Edgell herself.
★★★✰✰ The annual Ballet Icons gala, now in its 14th year, aims to promote Russian culture while providing a Sunday evening's entertainment for Russians in London and ballet-lovers...
★★★✰✰ If The Unknown Soldier is dispiritingly low-key, Wayne McGregor's Infra remains assertively bold...
★★★✰✰ Both pieces are demanding and elicit some impressively stylish moments, though there’s a fair amount of unevenness...
★★★★✰ A good night of new work for Leeds coupling a rising star from outside with local and much-loved company talent.
We talk to Jenna Lee about her work - The Four Seasons - for New English Ballet Theatre's autumn tour this September and October. That and about her wider choreographic practice...
★★★✰✰ Bouder's pick-up ensemble of eight, which she refers to as an arts collaborative, reflects her ideals. It is racially diverse; the choreographers include both men and women. Not all the choreographers are white. This should be par for the course, but it’s not.
★★★★✰ World-class dancers... it's the dancers' polish and power that raises all they do up another level.
★★★✰✰ Strangely neither the Arnott website or the programme highlight or say much about why the company is all female. I'm not against single-sex companies and the BalletBoyz show how effective it can be... but it seems too restrictive a vision here.
★★★✰✰ When Maya Plisetskaya commissioned a Carmen-based ballet from Alberto Alonso, co-founder of the National Ballet of Cuba, she wanted to shake up Soviet ballet conventions...
★★★★✰ For the Royal Ballet, there could not have been a better start to their Australian tour than Ferri’s performance as Clarissa Dalloway in the first act of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works.
★★★★✰ Nafisah Baba is the BBC Young Dancer for 2017. The 20 year-old contemporary dancer from West London won the award with a diverse trio of dances that grew stronger through the rounds.
★★★✰✰ The ballet’s narrative interest depends on the dancer, and both performers are magnificent – different in tone and physicality, though not markedly so.