★★★★✰ The live taping of four works by ABT’s resident choreographer Alexei Ratmansky is viewable during a generous streaming window through 18 April for $25, and includes the new quarantine creation, Bernstein in a Bubble...
Tag - Seven Sonatas
Stella Abrera, the much loved and recently retired American Ballet Theatre principal talks to Oksana Khadarina about her new life as Artistic Director of the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park and its much admired Festival. That and putting on a ballet for Alexei Ratmansky in St. Petersburg...
Alexei Ratmansky, the Covid-19 Interview - “Its’ like a dress rehearsal for retirement and it turns out that I’m not ready for it.”
★★★★✰ 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...
★★★✰✰ Their hunger for dance – that sense of palpable excitement to be onstage and in the moment – was particularly evident during the company’s premiere of Ratmansky’s Seven Sonatas.
★★✰✰✰ The trouble with Program 2 is its centerpiece, choreographer-in-residence Yuri Possokhov’s new work 'Optimistic Tragedy'.
★★★✰✰ “Hi! I am Julie Kent, artistic director of the Washington Ballet.” Looking ravishing in her long strapless slivery-white gown, her hair immaculately styled, the new director of the Washington Ballet introduced herself to the audience of the fully-packed Eisenhower Theater...
Hot off the presses, San Francisco Ballet 2016 season announcement includes two world premieres, three full-length revivals and numerous bold-face names, including Forsythe, Ratmansky and Wheeldon...
Critics have compared the new Liam Scarlett to Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering; if so, it’s as if Dances had been set in an unhappy corner of the planet, for a group of lost souls...
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, is there a ballet choreographer working today who is more imaginative, more wholly himself, than Alexei Ratmansky?
No-one could fail to be impressed by the versatility of ABT’s dancers and by the diverse repertoire they brought. They did themselves, their company and their country proud.
Do you perceive a difference between the musicality of American dancers and that of Russian dancers? AR: There is a huge difference in the musicality. I often found Russian dancers unmusical... But they have other qualities...
The 12th International Ballet Festival - Dance Open - was held over 4 days in St Petersburg. Margaret Willis (our Ms Expressivity) was there to report on much ballet and not a little award giving...
Well, performing for me is really about that experience of giving to the audience. In the studio you work and perfect things, you collaborate with your partner, but for me it’s about what happens on the stage, the ability to give something, to your partner, to the audience.
Sometimes the second time is the charm. This seems to be especially true when it comes to new ballets by Alexei Ratmansky. Often, they’re not easy to take in on first viewing, indigestible as an over-rich meal. But then, something in us changes, our eye evolves.