★★★✰✰ Though Ida Rubinstein must have been more of a poseuse than a danseuse, especially as she grew older, she had a remarkable career as an impresario. She used her money and social connections to commission creations from great composers, artists and choreographers...
Tag - Stravinsky
★★★★★ One of the most riveting things I’ve seen in a long time.
★★★★✰ Jann Parry reviews the RB Balanchine and Robbins bill featuring Apollo, Tchaikovsky pas de deux and Dances at a Gathering.
★★★✰✰ A double bill with a re-run of Hans van Manen’s 5 Tangos paired with the premiere of Firebirds (based on the Stravinsky score), this new work having the rare distinction of being created by an all-woman team led by choreographer Marianna Venekei.
★★★★✰ George Balanchine's "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" has just been streamed by NYCB - Jann Parry on a complex and effervesent masterwork, if Balanchine stated that it was simply his response to Stravinsky’s music...
★★★✰✰ All three pieces (by Alexei Ratmansky, Danielle Rowe and Yuri Possokhov) were strong, though the program itself felt a bit curious.
With one common factor, music by Igor Stravinsky, Scottish Ballet (SB) deliver two excellent and very contrasting performances which were filmed at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh in 2017.
★★★★✰ How is the company looking? ...the company looks good so far.
★★★★✰ New York City Ballet is off to a fine start when it opens the winter season with a very well-danced all Balanchine, all Stravinsky program.
★★✰✰✰ Phoenix Dance Theatre’s The Rite of Spring came with tantalising credentials: the company’s first collaboration with Opera North, and a UK debut for the Haitian choreographer Jeanguy Saintus...
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ Three short but densely packed ballets infused with a strong Russian flavour were at the heart of the Royal Ballet’s last bill of the season.
★★★✰✰ Rite of Spring: Through the perspective of a South Asian gaze, the brutality and finality of the original ballet’s pagan sacrifice is tempered by a rich spirituality and the optimistic suggestion of an after-life. It’s still scary but less barbaric.
★★★★✰ By swelling the numbers of her small touring company, Yolande Yorke-Edgell was able to mount a revival of Kenneth MacMillan's Playground and a 10-strong ensemble for Robert Cohan's Communion. The programme also included new works by Sophia Stoller and Yorke-Edgell herself.
★★★✰✰ As with most retellings, Liping’s centres on a young woman destined to dance herself to death. However, the dancemaker has invoked Buddhist principles, including the concept of reincarnation...
★★★★✰ There’s a reason why New York City Ballet doesn’t do George Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony very often. It’s a strangely disjointed ballet...
★★★★✰ Grouping this diverse triple bill under the title She Persisted works in so many ways...
★★★★✰ Dutch choreographer Didy Veldman has picked a rich subject to mine in The Knot: marriage in all its starry-eyed, nerve-wracking, life-altering glory.
Didy Veldman's Umanoove are about to tour her latest work - The Knot - an examination of the social and personal significance of marriage in contemporary Western society. Diane Parkes has a word about the work and what makes Veldman tick
★★★✰✰ A matinee in two halves: fine before the interval, with dire, dreary choreography in the second half. Thank goodness for the exhilarating Grand Défilé at the close.