★★★✰✰ Last week’s performance, of a triple bill of Balanchine works, was as normal as anything could be in these abnormal times...
Tag - Swan Lake
★★★✰✰ This year, the Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo’s visit could not have been better timed. As a new Covid variant closes in, we all need a little cheering up...
★★★★✰ Celebration Gala is not a red-carpet event with super stars on the stage but instead, a well curated showcase of The Australian Ballet’s principal artists, senior artists and soloists dancing in 10 different pas de deux.
★★★★✰ The annual ballet gala organised by Olga Balakleets and Ensemble Productions was deferred to the end of this year because of coronavirus restrictions. Fortunately, invited dancers from European countries were able to travel before the latest measures were imposed...
The Frederick Ashton Foundation marked its tenth anniversary with an evening of rarely performed Ashton pieces and a specially commissioned film, Frederick Ashton: Links in the Chain, by Lynn Wake.
★★★★✰ Francesca Hayward is entirely believable as a very young Juliet, overwhelmed by her first experience of falling in love.
Valerie Lawson on an important series, by WildBear Entertainment, excavating Australian Ballet's past and what's happening now for the company, with all the complications of Covid-19.
★★★★✰ The 2021 Royal Ballet School Summer Show, on the Royal Opera House Main Stage, was a different affair to normal with many of the White Lodge Junior School students physically absent because of Covid restrictions. But there was much to celebrate and lots of new work on display too...
★★★★✰ the company pulled off an uplifting performance with energy and charm.
★★★★✰ A rare and full mixed bill of a night from Northern Ballet, the more welcome for featuring two London premieres - by Amaury Lebrun and Kenneth Tindall. The premieres bookended a bill with one short work and two pas de deux between...
★★★★✰ It was a delight to watch artists perform who are no longer with the company, as well as many current dancers in the earlier days of their career...
"I thought it would be interesting to make this Swan Lake very specific for Finland. They are proud of their Nordic heritage and traditions; that whole idea of winter and the purity of nature is very dear to them."
★★★★★ Thank you, Royal Ballet, for giving so much pleasure in trying times.
★★★✰✰ PNB kicked off their season in October with a gala that was the first performance on the McCaw Hall stage since February, a mixed programme that showcased an ensemble of excellent dancers in both classical and contemporary choreography...
★★★★✰ 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 (★★★✰✰)
David McAllister, about to step down as the artistic director of Australian Ballet, has just released his memoir and it proves enlightening and candid reading about both the company and the man himself...
English National Ballet’s Emerging Dancer Competition is unique in British ballet in throwing the spotlight on more junior dancers or "the excellence of the Company’s young talent,” as ENB put it. This year’s competition is live-streamed from ENB's London studios on 22 September and ahead of the that we talk to the finalists – Ivana Bueno, Carolyne Galvao, Miguel Angel Maidana, Victor Prigent...
Royal Danish Ballet's Tobias Praetorius is an anomaly, a young dancer – he’s only 24 – who is already interested in playing character roles. He is also a choreographer and Marina Harss catches up with him about his latest project - a 'Pixiballet' (aimed at children) based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Princess and the Pea...
Alexei Ratmansky, the Covid-19 Interview - “Its’ like a dress rehearsal for retirement and it turns out that I’m not ready for it.”