★★★★✰ The Royal Ballet pull together in difficult conditions to make a show happen as well as possible, for which we applaud them with grateful pleasure.
Tag - Ryoichi Hirano
★★★★✰ The full bill features: The Sleeping Beauty Act III, Anemoi (new Valentino Zucchetti), Divertissements: Morgen (Wayne McGregor), Winter Dreams pdd, After the Rain pdd, Woman with water (Mats Ek and new to RB), Voices of Spring pdd.
★★★✰✰ With works from Christopher Wheeldon (Within the Golden Hour), Kyle Abraham (Optional Family: a divertissement - a premiere) and Crystal Pite (The Statement & Solo Echo)
★★★★★ Thank you, Royal Ballet, for giving so much pleasure in trying times.
Note that we are not running pictures of all the pieces in this bill. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ Kevin O'Hare, director of the Royal Ballet, came on stage to welcome the return of a paying audience for what turned out to be the opening and closing live performance of the season...
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 (★★★✰✰)
★★★★✰ Osipova inhabits the role of Anna Anderson with gruelling sincerity. She appears deranged from the beginning with close-up camera angles revealing a depth of despair that is tremendously affecting.
★★★★✰ The Royal Ballet did themselves a lot of good with the last new bill of the season - a one-off celebration of Margot Fonteyn. There was much to be reminded of and be proud of.
★★★✰✰ A very mixed bill... Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Medusa (★★✰✰✰), Christopher Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour (★★★★✰) and Crystal Pite's Flight Pattern (★★★★✰)
Works by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Christopher Wheeldon and Crystal Pite. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★✰✰ Somehow, still at the start of the run, the production seems sanitised, nicely 'English' in spite of Nicholas Georgiadis's imposing Italian Renaissance sets and costumes. Different casts yet to come might bring fresh discoveries...
★★★★★ With Marianela Nunez and Vadim Muntagirov... Theirs was a performance that caught up everyone in the sheer pleasure and excitement of spectacular dancing.
★★★★✰ Liam Scarlett’s Asphodel Meadows has made a welcome return to the Opera House stage, reminding us exactly why his prodigious talent was given a main stage debut when the choreographer was just 24.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★✰✰ If The Unknown Soldier is dispiritingly low-key, Wayne McGregor's Infra remains assertively bold...
★★★★✰ Osipova is lethally orgasmic... Never has MacMilllan's choreography for the death duet seemed so astounding as in her account of it.
"I knew that I had to seize my only chance to have a ballet career. Masha Mukhamedov agreed to teach me privately six days a week for ten months..."
★★★★✰ The ostensible link between the three works in this mixed bill is that they are by the Royal Ballet's resident choreographers, past and present: Frederick Ashton. Kenneth MacMillan and Wayne McGregor. But none is typical of the choreographers' work...
A triple bill of works by Wayne McGregor, Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. Gallery by Dave Morgan...