★★★✰✰ All up this is a most thoughtful and involving R&J for our time, one that with some dramatic honing will have a long life and which can speak powerfully to both new and old audiences. It's a dance of consequence, as ever, from Rosie Kay.
Tag - Romeo and Juliet
★★★★✰ The 2021 Royal Ballet School Summer Show, on the Royal Opera House Main Stage, was a different affair to normal with many of the White Lodge Junior School students physically absent because of Covid restrictions. But there was much to celebrate and lots of new work on display too...
Rosie Kay’s new and radical take on "Romeo + Juliet" gets premiered on the 8 September at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Foteini Christofilopoulou with a heads-up & special shoot direct from the dance studio.
★★★★✰ It's been a long time since I've seen a piece of dance theatre quite so moving and thought-provoking as Adult Female Dancer.
★★★★✰ It was a delight to watch artists perform who are no longer with the company, as well as many current dancers in the earlier days of their career...
★★★✰✰ While Sarasota Ballet’s audiences in Florida may be familiar with much of the Ashton repertoire (more so than many British ballet lovers), international subscribers to Sarasota’s digital offerings have been able to catch up with some little-seen gems.
The choreographer & Ballet Zurich director talks about creating a new dramatic work for the Bolshoi based on Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando', on working with the Moscow dancers and the general travails of dance creation during a world-changing pandemic.
The entire Royal Ballet were back on stage and performing for a live audience last Friday in a gala style show which was/is also streamed. Jann Parry was mightily impressed with the dancing and repertoire (★★★★★) if not so much with the live audience experience in a Covid aware Opera House (★★★✰✰)
English National Ballet’s Emerging Dancer Competition is unique in British ballet in throwing the spotlight on more junior dancers or "the excellence of the Company’s young talent,” as ENB put it. This year’s competition is live-streamed from ENB's London studios on 22 September and ahead of the that we talk to the finalists – Ivana Bueno, Carolyne Galvao, Miguel Angel Maidana, Victor Prigent...
Alexei Ratmansky, the Covid-19 Interview - “Its’ like a dress rehearsal for retirement and it turns out that I’m not ready for it.”
New York City Center is streaming some ballet master classes, curated and hosted by Alastair Macaulay, and involving Misty Copeland, Sara Mearns and Tiler Peck. The coaches/guests include Nina Ananiashvili, Merrill Ashley, Alessandra Ferri, Stephanie Saland and Pam Tanowitz.
Carlos Acosta chats to Graham Watts about how things are going after his first few months at the artistic helm of Birmingham Royal Ballet & the impact that Covid-19 has had on his plans...
★★★✰✰ The first concert was not much of a consolation for all that we have lost. So far, the Royal Ballet appears a token add-on to the opera's contributions...
★★★★✰ Cathy Marston has achieved much in bringing the life of Jacqueline du Pré to the ballet stage and perhaps one of the things that becomes even clearer with repeated viewings, is that the music and the dance are inextricably linked.
★★★★✰ Performances across the board are stupendous, reminding us that interpretations evolve and change, and do not disappoint.
★★★✰✰ This inventive dance theatre summarises Oscar Wilde’s one-act play, which relates the Biblical story of Salomé and her unrequited feelings for Jokanaan...
★★★★✰ The ballet works as a conflicted love story centred on the heroine, Tatiana. When Natalia Osipova dances the role, she brings home how Russian the character is.
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ 'Spellbound' delivered in every regard – opulent grandeur, terrific people watching and above all, marvelous dance.
Lynette Halewood with some reflections on London dance performances over the last year - the good and the less good...