★★★✰✰ Somehow, still at the start of the run, the production seems sanitised, nicely 'English' in spite of Nicholas Georgiadis's imposing Italian Renaissance sets and costumes. Different casts yet to come might bring fresh discoveries...
Tag - The Royal Ballet
★★★✰✰ The performance was thrilling ...because it marked the Aurora debut of soloist Wona Park, whose Kitri debut in the season-opening Don Quixote got loads of buzz. At just 19, she dances with an ease beyond her years...
This programme celebrated Annette Page's career with the Royal Ballet and supported the Motor Neurone Disease Association. She died at the age of 84 of MND, a cruel disease for a former dancer and an articulate, witty woman...
★★★★✰ As if an Ashton rarity weren’t reason enough to catch this program, there was also the presence of Marcelo Gomes, former much-admired principal dancer from American Ballet Theatre, to recommend it.
★★✰✰✰ Could Liam Scarlett's monstrous Frankenstein be fixed with more, better surgery? Evidently not, in this revival, three years after its creation.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★★ With Marianela Nunez and Vadim Muntagirov... Theirs was a performance that caught up everyone in the sheer pleasure and excitement of spectacular dancing.
★★★★✰ - Royal Ballet School in Liam Scarlett's new Cunning Little Vixen. ★★✰✰✰ - Royal Ballet's Yasmine Naghdi debut in Two Pigeons.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ This is my second review of Scottish Ballet's Cinderella this winter. Why? Well, it's a production I like and I wanted to see more dancers in it, silly!
★★★★✰ A harmonious blending of music and dance, it proved seventy-five minutes of non-stop bliss!
★★★★✰ Liam Scarlett’s Asphodel Meadows has made a welcome return to the Opera House stage, reminding us exactly why his prodigious talent was given a main stage debut when the choreographer was just 24.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ Now that we are all one more Nutcracker nearer death, as weary critic Richard Buckle used to bemoan, the Royal Ballet has given us a wintry bonne bouche of ballets to savour.
Semperoper Ballett Dresden were another new visitor in the summer, with a programme of Forsythe works, some not seen here before. But Forsythe is a theme this year in himself.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ I look forward to the changes inevitably coming to BRB, but I can't believe any new director will turn their back on such repertoire gems as La fille mal gardee and their Peter Wright Nutcracker.
★★★★✰ Matthew Bourne has reworked his famous "Swan Lake" and it's now touring. Graham Watts wrestles with iconic and uber definitions in a long look at a much-loved work.
To celebrate 10 year of live relays the Royal Opera House is hosting a Cinema Festival of past works in the newly rebuilt Linbury Studio Theatre. Jann Parry was there for the screening of Ashton's Sylvia (recorded in 2005) and which included Darcey Bussell reminiscing about dancing the lead role...
★★★★✰ Wright's ending is the best ever, preserving the assurance of the Grand pas de deux that the future must surely be blissful.