★★★★✰ Three short but densely packed ballets infused with a strong Russian flavour were at the heart of the Royal Ballet’s last bill of the season.
Tag - Mikhail Fokine
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...
★★★✰✰ New York Theatre Ballet’s director, Diana Byer, is known for dusting off the dance history books, and giving a dose of challenging revivals. This time NYTB joins may companies around the country and indeed, the world, in celebrating Jerome Robbins’ centennial...
The aim of the annual festival is to celebrate Russian influence in international culture, thanks to Diaghilev’s productions in the first two decades of the 20th century... St Petersburg also wants to boost its reputation as ‘a great forum of the arts’, introducing contemporary creations from different nations to Russian audiences.
★★★★✰ Kobborg has deconstructed the work; mixing up the narrative’s building blocks before reassembling them in a masterpiece of balance that remains recognisably traditional but is also refreshingly new.
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...
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ Symphonic Dances is Scarlett’s farewell portrait of Yanowsky. Like her, the ballet is big and bold, beautiful and elusive.
Gallery by Dave Morgan...
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...
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.
Les Saisons Russes / Natalia Sats Opera & Ballet – Petrushka, Chopiniana, Polovtsian Dances – London
The triumph of the triple bill was the rip-roaring account of the Polovtsian Dances, with the choir exulting from boxes at the side of the Coliseum stage.
...it’s very Russian in its mixture of comedy, satire and luscious spectacle – and first-class performances.
Graham Watts, visited the Natalia Sats Theatre in Moscow, earlier this year, to talk to both Liepa and Isaakyan about their new production of Le Coq d’Or.
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.
his diverse selection of 17 works (including musical interludes) is a gala in all but name and this one could have been sub-titled “Gems of The Royal Ballet” for all nine dancers hail from that company...
But altogether, this was an evening of historical curios that lacked consistent vibrancy.
An important event yesterday – the Royal Opera House annual press conference – with Kevin O’Hare announcing his first season as incoming Royal Ballet Director. He takes over from Monica Mason in the summer. I found myself Tweeting before (on reading the press releases) and during the press conference – on #roh201213. Here is the stream in all its contorted Tweetiness and...