Royal Ballet – Back on Stage – London
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 (★★★✰✰)
Book – Soar: A Life Freed by Dance – by David McAllister
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…
Outdoors Ballet – some different responses to Lockdown from around the world
As lockdown eases ballet is getting out of streaming from living rooms and into the big wide world – Jann Parry looks at six happenings/films involving dancers from Dance Theatre of Harlem, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Alonzo King LINES Ballet & The Royal Ballet
Marquee TV – Summer Shorts festival in association with Screen.dance and the SF Dance Film Festival
★★★★✰ 21 dance films, sourced from all over the globe and presented by Marquee TV in association with Screen.dance (Scotland’s Festival of dance on screen) and San Francisco Dance Film Festival.
An Evening with Scottish Ballet – part of Edinburgh International Festival 2020
★★★✰✰ Although An Evening with Scottish Ballet could have been better presented by the Edinburgh Festival, the programme showcases an enterprising company full of ideas…
BBC, Artangel and Sadler’s Wells – Jonathan Glazer’s Strasbourg 1518, featuring Pina Bausch dancers
★★✰✰✰ Strasbourg 1518 has been lauded as ‘head buttingly confrontational’ and an original ‘dance for today’. It isn’t. Familiar Bausch tropes don’t really reflect 1518’s psychogenic mania, which was communal, or today’s experience of isolation, stress and tedium.
Studio 5: Great American Ballerinas – the City Center virtual series of master classes
New York City Center is streaming some ballet master classes, curated and hosted by Alastair Macaulay, and involving Misty Copeland, Sara Mearns and Tiler Peck. The coaches/guests include Nina Ananiashvili, Merrill Ashley, Alessandra Ferri, Stephanie Saland and Pam Tanowitz.
Royal Ballet – Woolf Works – streamed archive recording of 2017 performance
★★★✰✰ Wayne McGregor’s first full-length creation for the Royal Ballet, Woolf Works, inspired by Virginia Woolf, remains one of his best works to date.
English National Ballet – Manon – streamed archive recording of 2018 performance
★★★★★ What we are fortunate to be able to witness in these constrained times is an intimate record of otherwise fleeting performances by exceptional artists.
Royal Opera House/Royal Ballet – Live from Covent Garden: Third Concert (27 June)
★★★★✰ The singers had the lions’ share of the concert, with just two pas de deux by Royal Ballet couples, Matthew Ball and Mayara Magri, Reece Clarke and Fumi Kaneko.
English National Ballet – Song of the Earth – streamed archive recording of 2017 performance
★★★★✰ The recording reveals how unusual the choreography is, as it was in 1965… Dancers in pointe shoes have to adapt to flexed feet, flat-footed parallel positions, torsos bent forward, elbows and wrists held at angles.
Royal Opera House/Royal Ballet – Live from Covent Garden: Second Concert (20 June)
★★★★★ Though the concert was a treat, could the Royal Opera House please try raising our spirits in future streamings, and give the Royal Ballet the prominence it deserves.
Royal Ballet – La Fille mal gardée – streamed archive recording of 2005 performance
★★★★★ If you want an antidote to any miserable lockdown mood, La Fille mal gardée cannot fail to lift your spirits and allow you to marvel at some really first-rate dancing.
Dance Theatre of Harlem – Creole Giselle – streamed archive recording of 1987 performance
★★★✰✰ Giselle was the first full-length classical ballet that Arthur Mitchell’s company of black American dancers would perform. He thought there would be no point in their pretending to be Rhineland peasants, so decided to set the 19th century ballet in pre-Civil War Louisiana.
Vadim Muntagirov on life under lockdown and dancing at the ROH again, to be seen this Saturday
The Royal Ballet’s Vadim Muntagirov talks about making the most of lockdown and getting ready to dance again for the Royal Opera House’s Live from Covent Garden transmission on Saturday night (20 June 2020), where he is dancing Ashton’s seldom-seen “Dance of the Blessed Spirits”…
Royal Opera House/Royal Ballet – Live from Covent Garden: First Concert
★★★✰✰ The first concert was not much of a consolation for all that we have lost. So far, the Royal Ballet appears a token add-on to the opera’s contributions…
Marianela Núñez on one of her fav ballets, La Fille mal gardée, and life under lockdown
Marianela Núñez talks about one of her favourite ballets, “La Fille mal gardée”, and life under lockdown, which for Marianela has been in Argentina. “La Fille mal gardee”, one of the most loved works in the Royal Ballet repertoire, streams this Friday, 12 June, from 19:00 BST
Royal Ballet – The Cellist – streamed recording
★★★★✰ Cathy Marston has achieved much in bringing the life of Jacqueline du Pré to the ballet stage and perhaps one of the things that becomes even clearer with repeated viewings, is that the music and the dance are inextricably linked.
Men at the Barre: Inside the Royal Ballet – BBC documentary
“If you missed ‘Men at the Barre – Inside the Royal Ballet’: a look behind the scenes at the male ballet dancers in the company, then do take the time to catch up on BBC iPlayer.”
Royal Ballet – Anastasia – streamed archive recording of 2016 performance
★★★★✰ Osipova inhabits the role of Anna Anderson with gruelling sincerity. She appears deranged from the beginning with close-up camera angles revealing a depth of despair that is tremendously affecting.
