Birmingham
Birmingham Royal Ballet splits in halfThursday, 05 April 2012Reaching parts of the country that otherwise it couldn't reach, Birmingham Royal Ballet is to do a split tour of mixed ballets across the UK's theatres, one group travelling to south and west, the other going north and east.Now in its ninth year,... Read more... |
Kaufmann, CBSO, Nelsons, Symphony Hall, BirminghamThursday, 08 March 2012
There was a lovely narrative to last night's CBSO concert. The muggy oppressiveness of Britten's Four Sea Interludes (and Passacaglia) appeared somehow explained by Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, then dissolved by the love letters that were the Strauss... Read more... |
Daphnis & Chloë/ The Two Pigeons, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham HippodromeSaturday, 03 March 2012
There must be a protest movement going on in Birmingham’s ballet against London’s - if down south they insist on Kenneth MacMillan’s box-office blasters, so in the Midlands it’s Frederick Ashton’s more fragile work that reigns. BRB director David... Read more... |
Hobson's Choice, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham HippodromeThursday, 23 February 2012
It's a rare ballet where the culmination you hope for is that the young guy gets to take over the business (an idea for a Murdoch ballet there, one day?). David Bintley's Hobson's Choice is surely his very best work, unmitigated pleasure for the... Read more... |
Birmingham Royal Ballet, 2012-13 SeasonWednesday, 22 February 2012
Birmingham Royal Ballet has outlined its 2012-13 season for its home base in Birmingham, indicating a shrunken repertoire due to subsidy cuts, but with a new full-length family ballet by David Bintley, Aladdin.The season will celebrate the art of... Read more... |
La Fille Mal Gardée, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler's WellsFriday, 21 October 2011
It may be that there is no sunnier place than Ashton’s La fille mal gardée. Certainly there is no sunnier ballet. It speaks not of great drama, nor ecstasy, but instead of gentle happiness, of quiet content and loving kindness. Not, one might think... Read more... |
Nuclear star dancer Robert Parker leaps to head ballet schoolMonday, 19 September 2011
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s star Robert Parker has been a ballet dancer and a trainee pilot - and is now to become artistic director of Elmhurst Ballet School in Birmingham, one of the two most important ballet schools in Britain.Known as “nuclear”... Read more... |
Birmingham - Home of MetalTuesday, 28 June 2011
This site has never acknowledged a distinction between high and popular culture. Nor, it seems, does the city of Birmingham. Currently bidding for UK City of Culture 2013, it is also promoting itself as the "Home of (Heavy) Metal". This summer, at... Read more... |
Seven Angels, The Opera Group, CardiffTuesday, 21 June 2011
Imagine you are at a study day being run by Friends of the Earth. They mount a play in which a group of angels who somehow got left out of the Book of Genesis fall to a completely barren earth, look around, and start reconstructing, re-enacting its... Read more... |
CBSO, Rattle, Symphony Hall BirminghamMonday, 13 June 2011
There was a macabre irony at the heart of this final concert in the CBSO’s Mahler cycle in Symphony Hall. Everything was back to front. It started with a Resurrection and ended with a death. Like the universe, it began with a bang and ended, Eliot-... Read more... |
Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, CBSO, Ono, Symphony Hall BirminghamThursday, 19 May 2011
Gustav Mahler died, according to his wife Alma’s memoirs, at midnight on 18 May, 1911. Anyone mystically inclined to connect noughts and "o"s – you see it crossed my mind – might find some spooky link between 00:00 (pedantically, the time of death... Read more... |
John Cleese, TouringFriday, 13 May 2011
Even if you are not of an age to have watched Monty Python’s Flying Circus or Fawlty Towers when they were first broadcast by the BBC, you will have heard of John Cleese. And if you are remotely a fan of comedy, you will hold Cleese in high regard... Read more... |
