Jann Parry on the award winning Peter Schaufuss "La Sylphide", not seen in the UK in decades, and Li Cunxin's Queensland Ballet who are bringing it to London this summer. Includes an interview with Cunxin...
Tag - The Sleeping Beauty
The Royal Ballet's Zenaida Yanowsky talks about her long career and also about the joys of working with Carlos Acosta - part of which is appearing with him in 'Cubania' this summer...
The million-dollar question for any dancer on the cusp is this: can they carry an evening-length story ballet? The answer, on the evidence of Copeland’s début in Romeo and Juliet, is yes.
Some of the great 19 century Russian ballet classics were recorded in Stepanov notation - Doug Fullington is one of the few people in the world who can understand Stepanov's hieroglyphics and what they represent for those looking to do justice to the past...
But no end of fine, or even inspired, performances can breathe life into this tired production
Perhaps the most striking element in Alexei Ratmansky’s new Sleeping Beauty for American Ballet Theatre is its musicality, the way the steps, peppered with accents and breaths, unspool within the music.
The gala opened with the Act III wedding pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty, performed by Ekaterina Osmolkina and Guiseppe Picone. No fish-dives in this version – the Russians regard them as vulgar, and Osmolkina could never be vulgar.
Year after year, I see Balanchine’s Nutcracker, and year after year I marvel at its perfection. This year it turns sixty.
Vadim Muntagirov, making his debut as Jack, is any girl’s dream of a dancing partner.
Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a showy affair...
Lloyd has written widely on English composers and is meticulous in combing together many fragmentary impressions of Lambert. The book weighs over 1.5 kilos, 419 pages of small print, most heavily annotated in smaller print still, with a further 150 pages of appendices.
The task Johnson faces is complicated, full of potential pit-falls. In these early seasons she is working to define the company’s character, while helping the dancers to hone their classical training and shine as individuals.
Wheeldon has honed his craft in making a story ballet, much better constructed than his Alice in Wonderland. His core characters account for themselves in revealing solos and his pas de deux are no longer over-ingenious.
Steven McRae: Dancer in the Fast Lane is a revealing insight into the world of Royal Ballet Principal Steven McRae. Photographed over the last 12 months by Andrej Uspenski...
In his programme note, Bintley claims to have foregone sexual romance in favour of ‘something more mystical and subtle’, connected with Japanese veneration of its Imperial family. It doesn’t resonate in this royal kingdom.
....thanks and admiration to Francesca Hayward for a blithe, swift Songbird Fairy, probably the most pleasing I've ever seen...
Gallery by Dave Morgan of the Yuhui Choe and Ryoichi Hirano cast
Royal Ballet and other Dancers Gala for Ghana London, Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, 2 February 2012 Original programme details www.ashanti-development.org Sunday’s gala evening of music and dance raised money for the charity Ashanti Development, set up at the request of Ghanaians living in London: they asked their friends and neighbours for help to improve the lives of people in their...
Lynette Halewood with her personal selection of London dance memories this last year...
So far this season I’ve seen three “traditional” Nutcrackers: Ratmansky’s version for American Ballet Theatre, Gelsey Kirkland’s, and the familiar and much-loved 1954 staging by George Balanchine for New York City Ballet. All three have their charms...