9 replies to this topic

[dirac]

The Birmingham Royal Ballet's tour of Japan goes well.

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The company toured cities including Tokyo and Nagoya in the aftermath of the massive earthquake which ripped through the country in March and the subsequent fears over the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant.

They raised £10,000 for its victims and those caught in the tsunami during their performances and an online auction.

[dirac]

The groundbreaking ceremony is held for Orlando's Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

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For a slide show of the event, check out Orlando Business Journal Photographer Jim Carchidi’s gallery here.

[dirac]

A review of Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve in 'Romeo and Juliet' by Tresca Weinstein in The Albany Times Union.

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The evening-length work unfolds in a world that transcends a specific time or place: The dancers wear street clothes (dresses for the women, slacks with button-down shirts or suit jackets for the men) and the only setpiece is a large, curving ramp that the dancers slide down, hide behind or run across. Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio and Tybalt are clearly defined, and the rest of the company embodies both their feuding dynasties and a sort of chorus that witnesses their story.

[dirac]

Leonid Kozlov praises Shen Yun to The Epoch Times.

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“I have always been fascinated by the beauty of [Chinese dance],” said the star who has toured worldwide and is now director of his own Kozlov Dance Studio. He talked about Shen Yun’s “very wonderful qualities,” in how the company performed classical dance and also interpreted folk dance.

Mr. Kozlov was accompanied by his wife Adriana, now also a ballet instructor at the couple’s Dance Studio, and a former lead ballerina in a long list of productions, including The Nutcracker and Swan Lake.

[dirac]

A review of Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve by Ken Ross in The Republican.

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I wish I could say I was walking on air when I left the theater. I give a lot of credit to a dance company that tries to reinterpret a well-known classic ballet like "Romeo and Juliet." Many dance fans know this ballet well. And most of us read the play in high school. And just so there’s no confusion, right in the program, right in the introduction, Theatre de Geneve's choreographer, Joelle Bouvier, clearly states that she does "not wish to follow the argument of Shakespeare's play to the smallest detail, but to concentrate on the essential canvas of the lovers' story in Verona and the fundamental situations." The result is a spare, simple reinterpretation of this classic tale - which many will surely love, but which left me wanting for something more.

Roslyn Sulcas' reviewin The New York Times.

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But the real issue with this “Romeo” is its lack of choreographic substance. Ms. Bouvier responds only in the most simplistic fashion to the music’s rhythms, and her ensemble dances are repetitive unison exercises in time-filling running, falling, lifting and empty gesturing that never venture into compositional complexity, and make little use of the dancers’ evident talents or ballet technique.

[dirac]

A story on the appointment of Kevin O'Hare by Alastair Macaulay in The New York Times.

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Mr. O’Hare has emphasized the new in his plans for the Royal. But chances are he’ll spend most of his time supervising the old, and in particular the 19th-century classics, which to date have predominated the company’s repertory. Here there’s much to be done. Between the late 1940s and the late ’70s the Royal Ballet was the company that led the West in its productions of the Franco-Russian classics: notably “Giselle,” “Swan Lake,” “The Sleeping Beauty” and the Shades scene of “La Bayadère.”

[dirac]

Reviews of the National Ballet of Cuba.

The Los Angeles Times

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The group dancing ought to tighten up with repeat performances (through Sunday). But the rumpled cloth scenery by Salvador Fernández  also suggests a shabby touring compromise. Created in 1988, the production by Alicia Alonso, Marta Garcia and Maria Elena Llorente adopts much of the familiar Petipa/Gorsky choreography but sets the action during the French occupation of Spain. Thus, as always, Don Quixote seeks his vision of the perfect woman, but now also exemplifies native resistance to the invader.

This social/political context conditions but never obstructs the celebratory nature of the work, or the star performances at its center. Indeed, for Latin fire, high-speed bravura and drop-dead exactitude, Anette Delgado's performance of Kitri owned the night. The balances, the extensions, the turns, the flying splits, the freedom in the lifts -- here was a virtuoso dancer in her element. Her only failing: a rather constricted, emotionally vacant lyricism in the dream scene

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The Huffington Post

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Our Cuban brothers and sisters cruised into the Los Angeles Music Center last night. They drove their charmingly ramshackle Don Quixote, a vehicle purring on high-octane Russian ballet technique that's been passed through generations -- like the classic cars in which the islanders parade the Havana coastline.

The ballet was choreographed in 1988 by Alicia Alonso, after Petipa/Gorsky original dating from 1869. It was a winsome and nostalgic tour in a ballet time capsule, a demonstration of how it used to be done, a display of clean and unfettered classical technique by the engaging, youthful company. The dancers, brown skinned and with few exceptions homogeneous in their look, burst through the conventions of Minkus's war horse of a three-act ballet, eager to please. The ballet's claptrap narrative about the old geezer, Don Q, with sidekick Sancho Panza, pursuing Dulcinea, the feminine ideal, faded into irrelevance in a showcase of the beautifully trained dancers' technical prowess.

[dirac]

Christian Louboutin creates a pair of ballet shoes with 8-inch heels.

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And next week the footwear - featuring the brand's distinctive red soles - will be put up for public auction. The sale aims to ease cash problems at one of the world's leading dance companies, the English National Ballet.

Louboutin said: "Isn't the classical dancing ballet slipper the ultimate heel? The heel which makes dancers closer than any other women to the sky, closer to heaven." The sale also features dazzling costumes by designers such as Erdem, Giles Deacon, Julien Macdonald, Bruce Oldfield, Beatrix Ong and Moschino.

[dirac]

A review of ABT in "Coppelia" by Hanna Oldsman in The California Literary Review.

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Osipova dances on a similarly grand scale: her buoyant leaps seem disproportionately large for her small frame (and appear nearly effortless), and her expressive face and upper body register to the whole theater. Her Swanilda is entirely delightful: canny and curious, charming and occasionally petulant. Her interactions with Dr. Coppelius, when she pretends to be a doll (Coppélia) that has come to life, are particularly amusing, as she veers from bored nonchalance to a real inclination (and talent) for instigating mayhem. On the night I saw her, her dancing was clean and expansive throughout, save for some unevenness in the final adagio. These few sticky moments were perhaps unavoidable, as Osipova was a bit too tall for her partner, Daniil Simkin (an otherwise very good Franz).

[dirac]

A Q&A with Tamara Rojo by Ismene Brown for The Arts Desk.

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So was this more demanding than other arena performances?

Yes - that, and the fact that the stage was so big. Though I did have the advantage of performing [Strictly Gershwin with ENB] at the Albert Hall the previous week! But yes, it was relentless. There was no second to catch breath. Even the moment when I eventually lie dead on the bed, I was very conscious of not breathing visibly. Of not rolling my eyes even when closed, because the camera could see that. In a stage performance those are moments you can rest.