March 2012
ROH2 New Dance Commissions at Linbury Studio Theatre
I hope this is a work in progress, just as I hope the other two are. With more rigorous editing and shaping, all three New Commissions might become pieces to see again
English National Ballet - Beyond Ballet Russes, Prog 2
Suite en Blanc is a fresh-as-paint ensemble piece of eight sections, wonderfully staged and danced, with Laurretta Summerscales and Elena Glurdjidze outstanding.
Streetdance 2 3D
Streetdance 2 has brash energy; it does not neglect to do what it says on the tin and the lack of realism is no problem.
English National Ballet - Beyond Ballet Russes, Prog 2
honours go to Elena Glurdjidze in the flirtatious Cigarette solo. She allowed each phrase to linger intoxicatingly, so that her dancing trailed a cloud of delicate, heady perfume.
English National Ballet - Beyond Ballet Russes, Prog 2
Eagling wittily captures the period without tipping into archness. Stylistic references to the angular modernism of Nijinsky (and his sister, Nijinska) are bent into a framework for playfulness and flirtation
English National Ballet - Beyond Ballet Russes, Prog 2
The evening opened with a fine account of Balanchine’s Apollo. Zdenek Konvalina, a very elegant dancer, plays the young god with smooth lines and intelligent phrasing. He’s matched by Daria Klimentová’s Terpsichore, danced with clarity and warmth.
Royal Ballet - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
The plot remains episodic and uninvolving, the choreography lacklustre and the characterisation perfunctory.
The Most Incredible Thing
this very modern adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1870 fairy-tale surges forward, sleekly and relentlessly, as if fearful that pausing even for a second might suffocate it.
The Most Incredible Thing
Buried inside this big multimedia production, an illuminating fable is waiting to get out; one that marries a vision of love with a vision of creativity. You glimpse it in the central scene depicting a world of wonders, but mostly this entirely postmodern piece – whi…
The Most Incredible Thing
The Most Incredible Thing is given a knowingly sardonic makeover by De Frutos. The winning device — a magical clock that produces different biblical and allegorical figures when it strikes the hours — becomes a much more rarefied entertainment
News: Phyllis Bedells Bursary winner 2012
Fifteen-year-old Chisato Katsura, has won the Phyllis Bedells Bursary, held on Sunday 25 March 2012 at Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) Headquarters. Named after Miss Phyllis Bedells, founding member and Vice Presi… Continue Reading
English National Ballet - Beyond Ballet Russes, Prog 1
David Dawson’s duet Faun(e), … This tasteful study in sexuality, companionship and communication gets everything right, and is poetically danced by guest artists Jan Casier and Raphaël Coumes–Marquet.
Fleur Darkin - Blake Diptych: Experience
Darkin’s free-flowing choreographic language adapts itself well to family dynamics, and we’re given some sense of the social restraints and “mind-forg’d manacles” against which Blake was so passionately to react; but of the dangerous blaze…
News: The future of young British ballerinas
Where do all the White Lodge ballet students go after their training? As Luke Jennings finds out, only a small percentage graduate into the Upper School let alone the Royal Ballet Company. Continue Reading
English National Ballet - Beyond Ballet Russes, Prog 1
David Dawson’s Faun(e), by contrast, is an uncompromised joy. To the same Debussy score, this time played on two onstage pianos, Jan Casier and Raphaël Coumes-Marquet swirl around a shadowed interior in an unfolding cascade of dance.