★★★★★ Thank you, Royal Ballet, for giving so much pleasure in trying times.
Tag - Yasmine Naghdi
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 (★★★✰✰)
★★★★✰ Osipova inhabits the role of Anna Anderson with gruelling sincerity. She appears deranged from the beginning with close-up camera angles revealing a depth of despair that is tremendously affecting.
★★★✰✰ 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...
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ The annual Icons gala provides the chance to see dancers who don't often appear in London...
Lynette Halewood with some reflections on London dance performances over the last year - the good and the less good...
★★★★✰ The Royal Ballet's current production of The Sleeping Beauty, dating back to 2006, is a homage to Ninette de Valois and her faith that Marius Petipa's Imperial Russian ballet should be the flagship of her British company.
Lead Casting: Yasmine Naghdi and Matthew Ball. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ The Royal Ballet did themselves a lot of good with the last new bill of the season - a one-off celebration of Margot Fonteyn. There was much to be reminded of and be proud of.
★★★★✰ Three short but densely packed ballets infused with a strong Russian flavour were at the heart of the Royal Ballet’s last bill of the season.
★★★✰✰ The annual Ballet Icons gala, now in its 14th year, aims to promote Russian culture while providing a Sunday evening's entertainment for Russians in London and ballet-lovers...
★★★✰✰ 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...
★★★✰✰ 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...
★★★★✰ - Royal Ballet School in Liam Scarlett's new Cunning Little Vixen. ★★✰✰✰ - Royal Ballet's Yasmine Naghdi debut in Two Pigeons.
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★✰✰ If The Unknown Soldier is dispiritingly low-key, Wayne McGregor's Infra remains assertively bold...
Featuring Alastair Marriott's new "The Unknown Soldier", Wayne McGregor's "Infra" and Balanchine's "Symphony in C". Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★★✰ In the past, the Royal Ballet's version, last performed five years ago, has sometimes seemed insubstantial. Not so this time, with a luxury cast in full dramatic mode: Vadim Muntagirov, Marianela Nuñez, Natalia Osipova and Gary Avis...