5 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Reviews of the Royal Ballet in 'Romeo and Juliet.'

The Guardian

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It was more a social than an artistic experiment. Kenneth MacMillan's choreography is largely intact, but is bigged up by an amplified orchestra, heightened set and live relay screens (essential for a stadium this size). Filmed vignettes of the dancers serve as intertitles to scene changes, and the whole production – with its declamatory gestures, emotive live music, cutting between crowd scenes and closeups – has the feel of silent cinema.

The Stage

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A shambolic entry system means that curtain-up is delayed, and latecomers clutching plastic pints of beer and hotdogs are drip fed in through the first act.

It’s a fun, if slightly chaotic vibe, and it seems many of the punters in this 20,000-seat venue aren’t the usual Royal Opera House locals; the ballet is truly being bought to the masses.

The Telegraph

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Even sitting relatively near the stage, your eyes generally went up to the middle screen, which, given all the camera pans, meant you were in fact looking at a selectively edited version of what was happening on the stage. For those at the far end of the vast space, the stage itself must have been all but irrelevant. (Certainly, Nicholas Georgiadis’s monumental designs for the ballet were bowdlerised throughout.)

The Evening Standard

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But you can live with all this with the magnificent Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo as Romeo and Juliet. If he is past his virtuoso youth, her dancing is both sumptuous and the match of the venue - she's had practice at the Royal Albert Hall while at English National Ballet a decade ago. Both were acting so potently that even from the back of the 02 you could only envy the romantic daring and velvet sensuality of Shakespeare's star crossed lovers. What Hollywood actor could convey the intimacy and exhilaration of a first kiss in so vast a venue?

[dirac]

Readers of The Washington Post complain that the paper's coverage of Queen Margrethe II'svisit was less than adequate.

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In two letters to the editor on Friday, readers complain about overall coverage of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and what it says about the publication as a whole. Here’s the item in question. And another in Style on the Royal Danish Ballet performance at the Kennedy Center.

Letter

[dirac]

Londonisttallies the critical response to the Royal Ballet's arena version of "Romeo and Juliet."

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Freed from the ‘no food and drink, no latecomers’ etiquette of Covent Garden meant hot dogs, beer and popcorn accompanied the tragic action, and – as at a pop concert – people could come and go as they pleased. The New York Times spoke to some audience members and calls the event a “grand experiment in democracy, a way for ballet to break free from its rarefied, elitist image”.

[dirac]

A radio interview with Robin Haig.

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Ballerinas seem to belong in a magical world alongside fairies and angel dust, but this morning we had the pleasure of meeting a real life ballerina. Robin Haig (pictured with Dugald) is a world class ballet dancer, who has worked with the likes of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.

[dirac]

Diana Vishneva celebrates her fifteenth year as a dancer with a gala and an exhibition.

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The exhibition, featuring photography and video material of Vishneva’s dancing, opens at the Museum of Theatre and Music Arts on June 22. The gala, with a program built around several contemporary dance productions, will take place at the Mariinsky Theater on June 23.

“I'm in no way trying to sum anything up with this exhibition. It’s an attempt to talk about what interests me at this moment,” Vishneva said. “Earlier this year, we released Angelin Preljocaj’s ‘Le Parc’ at the Mariinsky Theater. I then went on to prepare ‘Lady of the Camellias,’ one of my favorites. And now I’m focused on my work with the Martha Graham company.”

[dirac]

A review of the Royal Danish Ballet by Alastair Macaulay in The New York Times.

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This Danish production, new in 2003, has a magical feature that I’ve seen in only a few previous productions. The Sylph places one point onto what looks like thin air (actually a dark toehold) and, holding an arabesque, floats downward to the floor. The composer Herman Severin Lowenskiold — whom Bournonville commissioned to write this score — did an especially fine job here: the atmosphere of his music keeps changing, so that we hear, in quick succession, James’s pensive soliloquy, the wonder of this apparition outside the window, her expression of sympathy for his melancholy, and his amazed rapture and invitation to her to enter his domain.