
Ivan Putrov – Men in Motion (2017) – London
★★✰✰✰ All the ingredients seemed promising but the evening was disappointing, struggling to recover from the tedium of the dire opening item…

Mariinsky Ballet – Don Quixote – London
★★★★✰ Tereshkina and Kim match well physically and temperamentally. She has a lovely high-flying arabesque line and a wide range of slow and fast turns, small and expansive movements.

Gauthier Dance – NIJINSKI – Stuttgart
★★★✰✰ NIJINSKI neatly lassos this altogether using Goecke’s avant garde movement style …to give the Stuttgart audience an abstract impression of Nijinsky’s life and contribution to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

Obituary: David Drew, Royal Ballet Principal, with the company 56 years
David Drew, for 56 years a member of The Royal Ballet, has died after a long battle with illness. He described himself as one of a ‘bridge generation’ of dancers. The longevity of his career meant that he worked with many figures from the Ballets Russees – but also taught many dancers and choreographers working today.

Birmingham Royal Ballet – La Fin du jour, Miracle in the Gorbals, Flowers of the Forest – London
Gillian Lynne has made Helpmann and Benthall’s wartime collaboration into a gutsy dramatic ballet, probably with more choreography than Helpmann attempted.

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.

Andris Liepa and Georgy Isaakyan – Bringing Diaghilev Back: Recreating the Russian Seasons
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.

Gallery – English National Ballet – Tribute to Rudolf Nureyev (Rojo lead)
20 pictures by Foteini Christofilopoulou…

Gallery – English National Ballet – Tribute to Rudolf Nureyev (Klimentova/Muntagirov)
20 pictures by Dave Morgan…

Jean Abreu Dance – BLOOD – London
But Abreu’s charisma is impressive, as is his command of his muscles and vocal cords. And he is pursuing serious questions about identity and mortality even if he can’t provide the answers…

New York Philharmonic – A Dancer’s Dream: Le Baiser de la Fee, Excerpts from Neige, Petrushka – New York
…what joy to see a performance turn into a kind of rave, …to feel the music overflow the boundaries of convention and habit and feel, well, intensely alive.

Fabulous Beast – Rite of Spring, Petrushka – London
The vernal equinox having passed, here was my first sighting of The Rite of Spring in this the Centenary year of Stravinsky’s great masterpiece…

Gallery – Fabulous Beast in The Rite of Spring and Petrushka
30 pictures by Foteini Christofilopoulou…