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 (★★★✰✰)
Tag - William Bracewell
★★★★✰ Marianela Nunez and Vadim Muntagirov's account of Swan Lake is spellbinding... if Scarlett's revision of the 1895 scenario makes even less sense than the original.
★★★✰✰ In The Cellist, Cathy Marston has taken on a challenging subject for her first commission for the Royal Opera House stage: the real-life story of a much-loved musician Jacqueline Du Pré...
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ 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.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ The ostensible link between the three works in this mixed bill is that they are by the Royal Ballet's resident choreographers, past and present: Frederick Ashton. Kenneth MacMillan and Wayne McGregor. But none is typical of the choreographers' work...
A triple bill of works by Wayne McGregor, Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. Gallery by Dave Morgan...
★★★★✰ It's a myth that Kenneth MacMillan's Manon was ever regarded as a failure. Critics may initially have had reservations but audiences have enjoyed it from its first season in 1974 throughout its many revivals...
★★★✰✰ Leonard Bernstein wrote (in 1949): "I have a deep suspicion that every work I write, for whatever medium, is really theatre music in some way.' Many choreographers have taken up the challenge, though his quasi-metaphysical musings have usually eluded them: dance is more corporeal than music.
The Metropolitan Opera in New York staged "Le Rossignol" in December 1981 as part of a programme commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Stravinsky’s birth... the producer was John Dexter. He told Ashton, back in London, that he could choreograph two dancers as the Nightingale and the Fisherman on stage, while the roles would be sung by opera singers in the orchestra pit...
Hightlight - Yasmine Nagdhi promoted to Principal dancer. Full press release with all Promotions, Joiners and Leavers
★★★✰✰ I went to Bristol to catch Coppelia and the specific lead casting of Celine Gittens and Tyrone Singleton - who have now totally transitioned from being rising stars to fully risen Principals.
★★★★✰ Wink, best seen from above, is a valuable addition to BRB’s repertoire. So is José Limon’s The Moor’s Pavane, created in 1949.
Gallery by Dave Morgan...
2015 National Dance Awards – The Nominations Gallery of awards pictures Press release 25 January 2016 The 16th National Dance Awards The Place, London: 25th January 2016 The Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards for 2015 were presented today at a ceremony in London, hosted by Arlene Phillips CBE. Unusually, the judges decided to give two De Valois Awards for Outstanding Achievement in 2015 to...
The Dance Section of the Critics’ Circle is pleased to announce the nominations for the 16th National Dance Awards,
The 28-strong cast rose to the challenge of Themes and Variations, with its tricky footwork and complicated formations...
Opening night cast of Celine Gittens and Tyrone Singleton reviewed + some thoughts on Delia Mathews and Brandon Lawrence...
The King Dances is a man's ballet - it has to be said a very pretty man's ballet with gorgeous designs by Katrina Lindsay.