★★★✰✰ Wheeldon and his scenarist, Nicholas Wright, have made theatrical sense of a nonsensical children’s classic. This Alice, though, is a modern pantomime, not a classic ballet.
Tag - The Sleeping Beauty
★★★★✰ This year's Images Ballet Company is 8 strong, small in the graduate school scheme of things, and yet their show was one of the most exciting I've seen in years with a wonderful and eclectic choice of repertoire, danced with passion and verve.
★★★★✰ Alexei Ratmansky’s new ballet for ABT, Whipped Cream, is like a Viennese confection: so layered and airy that it takes a moment to fully take in the flavor of its many ingredients.
Meticulous reconstructions of Petipa, Cunningham, Graham, Taylor works are performance staples these days. Much rarer is a reconstruction like "Le Temple de la Gloire" (The Temple of Glory) a 1745 political opera-ballet with music by Jean-Philippe Rameau and a libretto by the philosopher Voltaire....
★★★★✰ The long gala (three and a half hours with one interval) was well organised, with no speeches and no protracted curtain calls.
Robert Barnett joined New York City Ballet in 1949. In those early years he worked closely with Balanchine and Robbins particularly before going on to direct Atlanta Ballet. Now 91 he is still actively involved in dance and passing on all he knows...
★★★★✰ The Fairy's Kiss (Ratmansky premiere): The final image is poetic, grand, inspiring. It takes one’s breath away.
★★★★✰ Maillot has succeeded in giving perhaps the most authentic retelling of Perrault’s story in dance with his tale of love overcoming the darkest evil...
★★★★✰ The grand pas de deux was the triumphant highlight of the fairytale festivities. Hay expressed the prince’s pride and pleasure in his variations; Takada was demure and regal in hers...
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.
★★★★✰ This is a production that lives and breathes, and which rewards multiple viewings, changing subtly with each cast.
★★★★✰ American Ballet Theatre’s spring season has turned into a kind of voyage into the mind of Alexei Ratmansky, its choreographer-in-residence since 2009.
★★★✰✰ Olga Smirnova danced the role of Aurora. Smirnova is a dancer with impressive physical gifts: beautiful proportions, a long elegant line, a supple back and expressive arms...
★★★★✰ It isn’t often that a gala program proves satisfying, but this one was the exception.
★★★✰✰ 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...
★★★★✰ "Ratmansky’s new staging is a Beauty like you have never seen before: it uncovers the original ballet’s genuine beauty, which faded over the years under the clutter of modern revisions."
The much admired Karen Kain has been directing the National Ballet of Canada for 10 years now - Oksana Khadarina catches up with her as the company prepare to visit Washington with Christopher Wheeldon's "Winter's Tale"...
With a feast of baroque extravagance that would please the Sun King himself David McAllister’s new Sleeping Beauty for the Australian Ballet is destined for a long life in the company’s repertoire.
Graham Watts talks to an ex-RB Soloist doing well as a Principal at Romanian National Ballet...