Feature - The Royal Ballet School recently danced a 'lost' Ninette de Valois ballet, "The Arts of the Theatre", reconstructed by Anna Meadmore. Jann Parry with a full report on an interesting excavation of the early days of British ballet.
Tag - Sergei Diaghilev
★★★✰✰ Stunning images of Bolshoi ballerina Svetlana Zakahrova dressed as Coco Chanel whetted the appetite for the London Premiere of her latest how, Modanse.
★★★★✰ The Royal Ballet's current production of The Sleeping Beauty, dating back to 2006, is a homage to Ninette de Valois and her faith that Marius Petipa's Imperial Russian ballet should be the flagship of her British company.
★★★★★ Ballet de Lorraine have reconstructed Relâche, a fascinating work first performed by the Ballets Suédois in 1924-25. It had caused almost as great a scandal as the 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring in the same Théâtre des Champs-Elysées...
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.
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 pleasure to see this company in such a smart and wide-ranging program. It was even more rewarding to see the Washington Ballet dancers masterly navigating the numerous challenges...
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ The long gala (three and a half hours with one interval) was well organised, with no speeches and no protracted curtain calls.
★★★★✰ The grand pas de deux was the triumphant highlight of the fairytale festivities. Hay expressed the prince’s pride and pleasure in his variations; Takada was demure and regal in hers...
★★★★✰ Whenever I see Michael Clark's company I usually come away energised and uplifted. Nobody fuses ballet to a youthful modern world like Clark does or reminds you that it's a tough technique that's been around a long time.
★★★✰✰ 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.
★★★★✰ The pleasure, above all, in watching this company is their fearless super-charge of energy and their commitment as the inheritors of Balanchine’s ballets.
30 dancers already confirmed include Natalia Osipova, Olga Smirnova, Semyon Chudin, Kim Kimin, Sarah Lamb, Xander Parish, Aline Cojocaru, Tamara Rojo, Marianela Nuňez and Thiago Soares.
Tina Sutton's book "The Making of Markova: Diaghilev’s Baby Ballerina to Groundbreaking Icon" is about to be released in paperback - Jann Parry talks to Sutton about unearthing one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century...
Lloyd has written widely on English composers and is meticulous in combing together many fragmentary impressions of Lambert. The book weighs over 1.5 kilos, 419 pages of small print, most heavily annotated in smaller print still, with a further 150 pages of appendices.
"This is how ecstasy is danced." Kimin Kim in Concerto DSCH.
Viktoria Tereshkina has a warm personality and this enhances her dancing. She has long thin limbs and offers expansive port de bras, while her legs whip up effortlessly but with control.
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.
...it’s very Russian in its mixture of comedy, satire and luscious spectacle – and first-class performances.