★★★★✰ "It’s not often that I’ve seen a Nutcracker receive a standing ovation, but as the curtain fell and Clara ran to greet her mother, there was nothing to do but stand and applaud."
Tag - Yuan Yuan Tan
★★★★✰ It was a delight to watch artists perform who are no longer with the company, as well as many current dancers in the earlier days of their career...
★★★★✰ I had missed SFB’s London season at Sadler’s Wells in 2019, so was pleased to catch up with ballets brought together for this digital triple bill.
★★★★✰ San Francisco Ballet’s Program 2 was dubbed Classical Re(Vision) – a remembering of and reconnection with choreography in SFB’s existing repertory catalogue.
★★★★✰ The annual Icons gala provides the chance to see dancers who don't often appear in London...
★★★★✰ It’s been a treat to see so much new work made specifically for a company. The dancers are free, unburdened by the weight of history and expectation, with no comparisons to be made to famous past performers or interpretations. It’s all theirs.
★★★★✰ Ballet companies across the globe are in a new age of commissioning ...but none can match the pioneering zeal of this, the oldest American ballet company.
★★★★✰ A gleaming triptych of imaginative and remarkably demanding choreography. The production is textured in every aspect, plumbing deep wells of emotion and revelling in a multiplicity of tones, tempers and movement styles.
Alexei Ratmansky's Shostakovich Trilogy comprises Symphony #9, Chamber Symphony and Piano Concerto #1. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★✰✰ The choreography in Shostakovich Trilogy, which was co-commissioned by SFB and ABT and premiered in 2014, is as frustratingly capricious as the music.
★★★★★ A hundred monkeys might eventually type out Hamlet, but only a herd of unicorns on Ecstasy could come anywhere near Arthur Pita’s Björk Ballet.
★★★✰✰ Not all, but many pas de deuxs have a romantic subtext, whether intentional or not. But in Rodeo Peck has crafted a pas de deux celebrating introductions and the process of getting to know another person.
★★★✰✰ With only four works, no intermissions and a run time of less than two hours, New York City Ballet’s Spring Gala was short and to the point.
★★★★★ Pita’s Salome is pure postmodern dance-theater, and a five-star surprise on the Opera House stage.
★★★✰✰ The soloists and principals of San Francisco Ballet brought unique interpretations to George Balanchine classics for the company’s fourth program of the season, a varied survey of Balanchine’s oeuvre.
★★★✰✰ "But despite his high concept, Scarlett seemed to lose the thread halfway through, resorting to lascivious theatrics to complete the work..."
★★★★✰ "....that is what is marvelous about Forsythe's Pas/Parts. Would that more choreographers would offer that kind of brisk and bracing slap in the face."
★★★✰✰ By way of a défilé, the evening opened with the “Waltz of the Hours” from Balanchine and Danilova’s Coppélia ...Soloist Jennifer Stahl led two dozen girls from the SFB School, adorable in cotton-candy tutus.
If it was up to me, I would pay more [salary] to the corps than to the principals. Half the ballet depends on them, and it is very hard to be in a good mood and trying your hardest every day when you are not getting the attention and the development that we get as principals and soloists.
Swimmer is one man's journey from being the stereotypical breadwinner... to his own self-realisation in a kind of isolated freedom.