★★★✰✰ 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...
Tag - The Dying Swan
★★★★✰ Jann Parry reviews the RB Balanchine and Robbins bill featuring Apollo, Tchaikovsky pas de deux and Dances at a Gathering.
★★★★★ Thank you, Royal Ballet, for giving so much pleasure in trying times.
Note that we are not running pictures of all the pieces in this bill. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ 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...
Carlos Acosta chats to Graham Watts about how things are going after his first few months at the artistic helm of Birmingham Royal Ballet & the impact that Covid-19 has had on his plans...
★★★✰✰ This year's Russian Ballet gala was ostensibly in honour of the 200th anniversary of Marius Petipa's birth. Any choreography attributed to him was mostly a long way 'after Petipa', but it's always fun to see excellent Russian dancers deliver pas de deux from Don Quixote, Swan Lake and Le Corsaire.
★★★★✰ The Royal Ballet’s away-day to Hull, this year’s UK Capital of Culture, was dramatic in its scale: 17 pieces presented over three hours...
★★✰✰✰ Some vein connected Bells and Fool’s Paradise on Thursday night and it wasn’t encouraging. Both pieces overuse the female body as a vulnerable entity...
★★★★✰ The long gala (three and a half hours with one interval) was well organised, with no speeches and no protracted curtain calls.
Gallery by Dave Morgan...
★★★★✰ The range of roles shows the Royal Ballet dancers, up-and-coming soloist, established principals and character artists, at their very best.
★★★✰✰ Every gala needs a revelation, and this one was provided by Sergio Bernal, a Spanish dancer who dominated the stage in an imperious farruca solo from Antonio’s flamenco version of The Three Cornered Hat...
★★✰✰✰ What’s going on in the head office at the Mariinsky Ballet?
★★★★✰ 2016 marks the tenth annual “Sadler’s Wells Sampled,” a January taster of the London dance house’s upcoming season.
Acosta deserves every moment of his standing ovation...
So a tip to the wise up front - see them in London while you can or catch them on their subsequent UK tour....
Gallery by Dave Morgan...
In all, this was a tremendously entertaining and well-received program; but at the same time it left an unsettling impression that the Russian company is holding on to its eminent past with all its might, relying heavily on well-worn
This time, I made 15 trips to the theatres – there were performances at 5pm and 9pm each day - and saw 82 different full-length ballets or extracts in the eight days I was in Havana.