9 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Reviews of the Royal Ballet in "Onegin."

The Guardian

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Yet despite the ballet's excess, it has an imaginative energy, an engagement with its source that feels more Russian, more vibrant than the familiar John Cranko version. It is carried primarily through Eifman's reimagining of period and place. The opening scenes portray Onegin and Lensky forging their friendship in the revolutionary ferment of 1991, their duets framed by news footage of protesters filling Red Square. When Onegin visits Tatiana at her rural home, we are immediately aware of her provincial remoteness, as her friends gossip listlessly in the mosquito-plagued heat; down at the village disco you can almost smell the frustrated hormones along with the cheap beer......

The Independent

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Taken out of his original Romantic context, Onegin’s behaviour becomes harder to understand. Why would he be bored, given the upheavals of recent Russian politics? There’s no code of honour driving him to fight a duel with his best friend, Lensky, so why does he do it?

[dirac]

A review of the Royal Ballet by Clement Crisp in The Financial Times.

http://www.ft.com/cm...l#ixzz1rZa4XqtA

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I greatly admire Scarlett’s earlier Fields of Asphodel but the new work is a miscalculation of subject – Sickert’s dark portrayal of sexuality – and of score. The music’s drenched manner – it was composed in the shadow of Tchaikovsky’s death – is denied by Scarlett’ s luridly energetic evocation of London low-life and Sickert’s obsessions in an erotic narrative that resembles pastiche MacMillan. Fine dancers are involved in this long-winded event, and John Macfarlane’s designs of sordid bedrooms, back streets and a Victorian music hall, are powerful. Characters, including Lord Salisbury, one of Queen Victoria’s grandsons and even the Ripper’s spectre, semaphore angst, encounter razors and drabs, and Scarlett’s choreography beavers on. To no avail. These are cyphers; narrative and dance are emotionally clogged.

[dirac]

A National Public Radio feature on Pacific Northwest Ballet's "Apollo." Text and audio.

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Orza was 12 when he left home in San Francisco to study at the School of American Ballet in New York. That summer in New York convinced him he wanted to dance professionally. But he'd have a lot of work to do.

"I was just so teeny and had problems partnering and all that kind of stuff. And when I got to New York City Ballet (where he first danced professionally) I remember I was still kind of small, especially my upper body. I started going to the gym because I had to be able to lift girls."

[dirac]

Yuri Grigorivich is in Seoul for the Korea National Ballet's production of "Spartacus."

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This isn’t Grigorovich’s first time working with KNB for the heroic tale, which requires a large number of male dancers as well as strictly synchronized corps de ballet. KNB in fact was the first Asian troupe to perform the piece in 2001, under the guidance of Grigorovich. Following the success of the first run, the national ballet troupe co-staged the piece with Russia’s Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre in Seoul in 2007.

“I think KNB director Choi Tae-ji has done a marvelous job creating the right environment for the dancers,” Grigorovich said. “The dancers keep pushing themselves to the limit, enjoy what they do, and really try to pull out their best efforts.”

[dirac]

An item on Joy Womack at the Bolshoi in The Huffington Post.

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"I was put with the graduation class in repertoire ahead of the other girls in my class … that had created a lot of jealousy and a lot of questions," Womack told NBC's Irina Tkachenko.

Since then the teen had made a few friends at the school, likely aided by having learned to speak Russian.

[dirac]

The Royal Winnipeg Balletfinishes its season with a ballet set to songs by Leonard Cohen.

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Canadian singer-songwriter Allison Crowe and Winnipeg duo Keith and Renée will perform live with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet as part of the score for the world-première work The Doorway: Scenes from Leonard Cohen.

The new ballet set to Cohen songs is part of the Pure Ballet mixed-repertoire program that will close the current season, May 9-13 at the Centennial Concert Hall. The choreographer is Jorden Morris, creator of Peter Pan and Moulin Rouge — The Ballet for RWB.

[dirac]

A reviewof Charles Joseph's Stravinsky's Ballets by Molly McQuade in The New Criterion.

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Stravinsky’s collaborations occasionally produced controversy as well as dance. Joseph recounts these bouts without taking sides unduly. Despite Stravinsky’s known penchant for ballet, he was wont to fall in—and out—of love with it. He was also likely to contradict himself. Even after the succès de scandale of Rite, he complained bitterly about Nijinsky’s lack of formal musical training as an impediment both to himself and to the dancers. In 1921, a few years later, he “pronounced ballet bankrupt as an expressive art form,” Joseph reports. Of L’Histoire du soldat (1918), Stravinsky declared, as Joseph puts it, “that the dancing had been inserted simply to prevent monotony.” Moreover, Stravinsky believed “that there had in fact been too much of it.”

[dirac]

A review of Sylvie Guillem in "6000 miles away" by Robert Greskovic in The Wall Street Journal.

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Ms. Guillem's "partner" here was Elias Benxon's black-and-white film that first revealed the dancer as if looking through an Alice-in-Wonderland keyhole and eventually suggested that she had emerged from the silvery film in full color to dither around the screen and stage. The presentation amounted to a fairly monotonous view of Ms. Guillem as a kind of wan, hang-dog clown.

As she randomly and inanely cavorted, Ms. Guillem paused, in a would-be show of feisty freedom, to perform without socks and shoes. For these moments, her nearly prehensile-looking feet, which have become as much her signature as her extravagant leg extensions, were not quite bare. Instead, they were taped and braced at the heel, looking more artificial than natural.

[dirac]

The new reality show featuring Ballet West is scheduled to debut next month.

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The network describes the still-in-production "Breaking Pointe" as a show that "goes behind the stage curtain for an intense, unfiltered look at one of the most competitive ballet companies in the country, Ballet West, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Beneath the beauty and glamour of the dance and costumes is a gritty dog-eat-dog world of extreme athleticism, focus, dedication, passion, pressure and, of course, the hunt for the unattainable...perfection."

[dirac]

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatrewraps up its season with "Coppelia."

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Barker is excited to be conducting "Coppelia" again in Pittsburgh, and under much better conditions than his debut seven years ago. Then, the orchestra, after a one-year hiatus, was being reassembled for a single performance, opening night, with just a single rehearsal. This time, the musicians have two rehearsals plus the dress rehearsal.