4 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Christopher Hampson will be the next artistic director of Scottish Ballet.

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The award-winning director and choreographer will take over from Ashley Page in August next year.

Mr Page, who is credited with turning the company's fortunes around, had been keen to stay - but was unable to agree a new contract with the board.

[dirac]

A review of Cincinnati Ballet in 'Giselle' by Stephanie Kitchens in The News Record.

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Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra began to play Adolphe Adam's overture. The curtain rose to reveal a cottage and wooden benches on both sides of the stage with a backdrop portraying a quaint countryside.

Liam Fu played the role of Albrecht, Duke of Silesia, who disguises himself as a villager to court Giselle, a young peasant performed by Sarah Hairston. Fu encompassed Albrecht's strength, while Hairston portrayed Giselle's innocence well. Giselle first tries to deflect Albrecht's advances, but timidly begins to dance with him and fall in love.The peasants join the couple, and they perform several joyful dances. The peasant pas de deux was performed by Rodrigo Almarales and Maizyalet Velázquez; Almarales was particularly dazzling with his perfect pirouettes.

[dirac]

Picassobecame disillusioned with dance and dancers, suggests Jonathan Jones in The Guardian's blog.

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What changed? Some of Picasso's anger was, as it happens, the result of dance and dancers. As soon as he became famous, he had been drawn by the impresarios Jean Cocteau and Sergei Diaghilev into the world of ballet, where high art and high society entwined. Picasso worked intensively with the renowned Ballets Russes. It was his doorway to a new upper-class international set – and one result was that he married the Russian dancer Olga Khokhlova. Another result, narrated along with this catastrophic marriage in the third volume of John Richardson's biography, was Picasso's first visit to London to design the Ballets Russes production Le Tricorne. Presumably this is why Tate Britain has invited in the English National Ballet to celebrate its exhibition about Picasso's influence in Britain.

[dirac]

A review of Fall for Dance by Hanna Oldsman for California Literary Review.

This reimagining of the eponymous variation from Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, known best in the dance world as the music for Fokine’s The Dying Swan, is a three-minute illustration of everything that makes the festival so fascinating.  Fall for Dance offers a chance to see vastly different dance styles on one stage; Lil Buck’s Swan is a visually arresting confluence of classical ballet and Memphis street dancing (jookin’).  While a few of his showier tricks feel a bit jarring against the fluid score, there is a lot to like here: this talented dancer’s liquid flexibility is mesmerizing, and his choreography is filled with moments of surprising musicality.

[dirac]

Charlotte Higgins' Arts Diaryin The Guardian:

Lauren Cuthbertson, the young star of the Royal Ballet, this week told our dance critic Judith Mackrell that she chooses a signature perfume for each role. Further inquiry reveals it's Vera Wang for Sleeping Beauty Act III ("very bridal") and Annick Goutal's Petite Cherie for Alice ("it smells like grass and fresh flowers … and it also seemed right for the trip through Wonderland"). She's still "sniffing out" perfumes for her debut in the title role of Kenneth MacMillan's Manon this month, thinking about Bulgari's Jasmin Noir for the debauched Act II, set at a party of gamblers and demi-mondaines....