I first saw Onegin with Marcia Haydée and Richard Cragun when the Stuttgart Ballett made its New York debut in 1969. So when San Francisco Ballet premiered it in the 2011-12 season I was happy to meet an old acquaintance again.
Tag - Sleeping Beauty
Teresa Reichlen - known as Tess by friends and colleagues - is an immediately striking dancer: tall, pale, preternaturally serene. She could be a Madonna in a painting by Botticelli.
Sara Mearns has been New York City Ballet’s reigning Swan Queen since her breakout performance in 2006, when she was only nineteen years old and a member the corps de ballet. It was a performance of surprising intensity, edged with danger.
The festival was as intensive as ever, with three performances running on seven days, four on one day, some concurrently. The range and quality of dance overall was impressive.
Rawlins, 39, shared the numerous curtain calls with Colin Peasley, who must surely have broken some records for the longest full-time dancing career with one ballet company in history. His first appearance with the Australian Ballet was in Swan Lake in November 1962...
Most of the dancers on stage tonight were not even born when the Royal Ballet' s current Nutcracker production was new, and many of the audience too may imagine that it's been a feature of the Christmas season forever...
He knows he can’t surpass Petipa (or Ivanov for 'Swan Lake') – but he can tweak their scenarios into something uniquely his own. And he’s magnificently served by a cast of just 17, capable of switching roles at the twitch of a fairy’s wing.
Hong Kong Ballet presented a diverse and well-balanced mixed programme in early November, consisting of two premieres and a revival of a major work.
That said, the company is still on top form. The corps de ballet is flawlessly unified technically, stylistically and musically down to their eyelashes.
36 pictures by Dave Morgan...
The highlight of the program was the seldom-performed Divertimento from “Le Baiser de la Fée”. It is a deceptively shadowy work, a fairy tale in the guise of a conventional divertissement.
What is there to say about Orpheus, except that it seems to slip deeper into the recesses of time? I’ve read that at the première, the critic and poet Edwin Denby was so moved by it that he sat dumbfounded during intermission, unable to stand. It is difficult to imagine such a reaction today.
The best thing about being at SFB is that I got to work with so many choreographers. It inspired me so much.
Keshyshev made a remarkable debut as Albrecht, partnering Zhang Si Yuan who was also dancing Giselle for the very first time. Both dancers were so confident, and assured, that it was hard to believe that they were actually making debuts...
I want to bring more of the public to the artform and see the enjoyment it brings. I suppose I believe I have something to say!
Mukhamedov will be playing the roles of Rothbart in Swan Lake, the Queen’s husband and Aurora’s and Carabosses’s father in Sleeping Beauty, Clara’s Father and Sugar Plum Fairy’s Cavalier in The Nutcracker, in all performances of all three ballets.
At the end the curtain came up once again, and Brigitte Lefèvre (artistic director of the ballet) and Nicolas Joel (director of the opera as a whole) emerged to announce the promotion of the evening’s Solor, Josua Hoffalt, to the ultimate rank: étoile. There were buckets of tears, from Hoffalt, Gilbert, and Dupont. In fact, it was the high point of the evening. An uncontrolled release of emotion...