Dance
Serenade & Giselle, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseMonday, 26 July 2010
We’re getting used to expecting the extraordinary from Natalia Osipova - and then getting some more. With her impish face and farouche capriciousness, with a spring like a high-jumper and shoulders like a swimmer, she is without doubt the most... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Milan: The Farce of Romeo and Juliet at La ScalaSunday, 25 July 2010
How often has one sat at a first night at the opera or ballet, groaning at missed cues, horrors with costumes, disasters with lighting: one thinks they should surely have got it right by this time? And the rest of the evening is somehow... Read more... |
Coppélia, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseThursday, 22 July 2010
Coppélia is the name of the doll in the ballet-comedy - not that of the heroine, who is a bad pixie named Swanilda, a girl of youthful capriciousness but a heart of gold. What you hope for when you go to see this usually rather quaint 19th-century... Read more... |
Reconstructing Ballet's Past 2: Master Restorer Sergei VikharevThursday, 22 July 2010
When Russia was plunged into Revolution in 1917, a chief balletmaster inside the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg feared the worst. It was not simply the death of Tsars he feared, but the death of all culture associated with them, including the... Read more... |
Laurencia, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumTuesday, 20 July 2010
Rape, marauding soldiers, peasants on the warpath and a flash hero - are we at the Bolshoi’s Spartacus once again? No, we’re at the Mikhailovsky Ballet down the road at the Coliseum where a rather more Erroll Flynn-type spectacle is being offered,... Read more... |
Spartacus, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseMonday, 19 July 2010
Roll up, roll up for the ancient Roman circus of a production almost as old as I am. Thrill to the catchy tunes and the oom-pah basses of flash Aram Khachaturian, played with the kind of lurid splendour you thought could only be faked on Soviet-era... Read more... |
Gala programme, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumMonday, 19 July 2010
The Mikhailovsky Ballet is full of surprises. Predictably for a Russian company it brought a gala programme yesterday - unpredictably, it brought a rare example of St Petersburg 19th-century ballet comedy and a new commission of contemporary ballet... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Choreographer Slava SamodurovSaturday, 17 July 2010
Choreography is a mystery art. How it happens - or indeed what happens - is as elusive to define as pinning down a brainstorm. There is no solid stuff, no rules, no pre-formed maxims, everything moves; the choreographer goes into a studio, finds... Read more... |
Swan Lake & Giselle, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 15 July 2010
It would be tough for any Russian ballet company to come into worldly, balletwise London just ahead of the great Bolshoi, but the Mikhailovsky Ballet make a very pleasing impression in their first week at the Coliseum with a pretty and historically... Read more... |
Hofesh Shechter's Political Mother, Sadler's WellsThursday, 15 July 2010
In the middle of the pulverisingly loud and utterly thrilling experience that is Hofesh Shechter’s new production Political Mother, I wished suddenly that all dancers could come and see this piece, see what clarion theatre dance can be. If the... Read more... |
Reconstructing Ballet's Past 1: Swan Lake, Mikhailovsky BalletWednesday, 14 July 2010
You need very little for a Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky’s music, white swan-girls, a mooning boy, and 32 fouettés for the ballerina in black. That's about it, isn't it? Every traditional Swan Lake we see now is a sort of balletic pizza - a musical base... Read more... |
Bolshoi tour - confirmation at lastTuesday, 13 July 2010The Royal Opera House ticketline is taking a while to catch up - last Friday's Moscow castings are now confirmed in London - but various inconsistencies are cropping up. The full confirmed casting list is below.While it is a fact of life that dancer... Read more... |
