Lynette Halewood with her personal selection of London dance memories from the past year...
Tag - The Royal Ballet
★★★✰✰ For all the recent innovations that Tamara Rojo has brought to the English National Ballet, including three stunning full-evening programmes of her own devising, the Nutcracker is still the heart of every season...
★★★✰✰ Set in early-20th-century Vienna, this Nutcracker is welcoming and unpretentious, and it moves as briskly as a storybook.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★★ The Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker has undergone various changes since its gala premiere in 1984, not least in the central roles of Clara and Drosselmeyer...
Gallery by Dave Morgan...
★★★✰✰ Some of these pieces are more successful than others but the dancers seize the opportunities with relish...
★★★✰✰ Multiverse: McGregor and his dramaturg may know what they want to convey about life and the universe(s) but despite the dancers’ efforts, the result is baffling.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
Gallery by Dave Morgan...
One of the leading interpreters of Kenneth MacMillan’s dramatic ballets Viviana Durante's leaving of the Royal Ballet at the height of her powers was a sad loss to London, if the gain of those who saw her perform elsewhere all around the world. Well now she's back at the Royal Opera House, this time to coach MacMillan's Anastasia, which is where Jann Parry caught up with her...
★★★★✰ ...the event is less about showing off the talents of dancers and their teachers than celebrating their hard work and dedication.
The Dance Section of the Critics’ Circle is pleased to announce the nominations for the 17th National Dance Awards,
★★★✰✰ The last act redeems the evening. We learn more about the characters in the final 40 minutes than in the two preceding acts.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
Gary Harris has had one of the most varied ballet careers you can get... dancer, teacher, ballet master, artistic director, designer and notator. Now he's working with the Royal Ballet to bring back Kenneth MacMillan’s Anastasia - Jann Parry went for a chat.
"Dancer" has been given a few screenings in London, most recently as part of the BFI London Film Festival, with Polunin and the director, Steven Cantor, in attendance for Q&A sessions...
★★★✰✰ Bintley has treated Shakespeare’s drama as a masque, full of spectacle, music and dancing, with elusive characters that are more allegorical than realistic. It doesn’t work as a narrative ballet because the sub-plots are too complicated...
★★★✰✰ In a nutshell Bintley's Tempest is a visual triumph but feels slight choreographically and you'd be well advised to mug up on the story before seeing it.
★★★✰✰ As UK ballet commissions go, it's probably the most anticipated of the season and really a career defining decision by Tamara Rojo. This is the way dance moves forward, by the art talking creative risk and if it's not the full ten tenths yet, then it's another solid step along the way...