★★★★✰ For those of us that have been involved with the company, no matter how small a part, it is clear that the ‘happy family’ that is English National Ballet, reveres and appreciates all who have been part of its 70 year existence.
Tag - Roland Petit
★★★✰✰ 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...
★★★★✰ All credit to Viviana Durante (supported by Royal Ballet, Ballet Black and Scottish Ballet dancers) for contributing to the 25th anniversary of Kenneth MacMillan's death with recreations of his early work.
★★★✰✰ This year's Russian Ballet gala was ostensibly in honour of the 200th anniversary of Marius Petipa's birth. Any choreography attributed to him was mostly a long way 'after Petipa', but it's always fun to see excellent Russian dancers deliver pas de deux from Don Quixote, Swan Lake and Le Corsaire.
★★★★✰ One great privilege of Rojo being both director and dancer must be the opportunity to choose her own partners and this year’s returning guest is Ivan Vasiliev...
★★✰✰✰ All the ingredients seemed promising but the evening was disappointing, struggling to recover from the tedium of the dire opening item...
★★★✰✰ 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...
English National Ballet’s Emerging Dancer Competition is unique in British ballet in throwing the spotlight on more junior dancers or “tomorrow’s stars” as ENB put it. This year's competition is on the 25 May and ahead of the that we talk to 4 of the 6 finalists - Isabelle Brouwers, Rina Kanehara, Madison Keesler and Guilherme Menezes...
★★★★★ One cannot help but observe that while the programmes of other companies both hit and miss, in terms of their critical appreciation and popular appeal, ENB is continually raising the bar...
★★★✰✰ Some titles for triple bills can be generic or aspirational rather than specific, but "Ham and Passion" is exactly what you get in this programme from DeNada Dance Theatre.
★★★★✰ Dance Umbrella brings to The Place an unusually thoughtful and touching work. In Use My Body While It’s Still Young, Norwegian choreographer Hege Haagenrud takes a cool and unflinching look at the unfashionable subject of ageing...
★★★✰✰ The most interesting item of the programme was definitely the revival of Roland Petit’s L’Arlésienne, created in 1974 when he was director of the National Ballet of Marseille.
More from the Cannes Dance Festival and director Brigitte Lefèvre definitely kept the best for the last night with Johan Inger’s full-length production of Carmen performed by the National Ballet of Spain...
You certainly don’t have to be Spanish to enjoy Carlos Pons Guerra’s fascinating triple bill of dance theatre, themed with inter-woven strands of flexible gender identity, anti-fascism, Catholicism, ballet legends and a succulent pork leg.
The long awaited collaboration between Wendy Whelan and Edward Watson has just been premiered at the Royal Opera House. Jann Parry on an interesting night...
The most impressive (if not, incredible) thing is that his scratch company exudes the professionalism that one would expect from a tight-knit group that has lived, trained, rehearsed and performed together for seasons.
It was only when I worked with Mats Ek that I understood who I was as a dancer.
Johan Kobborg took over as Director of Bucharest National Ballet just over a year ago. Time for Graham Watts to go and see how they are looking - in two very different bills...
Full Details of the 2014 / 15 Season...
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.