10 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Reviews of San Francisco Ballet.

The Evening Standard

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We want feisty American verve and pinpoint precision; we get laid-back Californian niceness. This is not a matchy matchy troupe but a company of individuals and they just need the right choreography to dazzle — the molten muscled Daniel Deivison-Oliveira, in particular, I'd like to see let loose. Still, there's more to come, with two further programmes featuring more Wheeldon, Mark Morris, Ashley Page and more. Stay tuned.

The Stage

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....Sadler's Wells kicks off its autumn 2012 season with a two-week, three-programme visit from San Francisco Ballet. Not seen in London since 2004, the company is one of America's premier troupes, and on the evidence of the first mixed bill it is in fine shape.

The Independent

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Many ballet companies struggle to stage new works. For San Francisco Ballet, it looks like a breeze: they're dancing eight in this London season, spread across a generous three programmes. Two nights in, you can see a clear company style. The dancing is expansive and open, with vivid personality from the many soloists.

The Telegraph

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It is such qualities, cultivated by artistic director Helgi Tomasson, that make this long-established but youthfully populated company, punch well above its weight in the world of dance. The three ambitiously mixed bills of work they are presenting in this short Sadler’s Wells season are a chance, therefore, both to enjoy their skill — and understand how very hard it is to find short ballets entirely worthy of it.

[dirac]

A review of Tulsa Ballet by James D. Watts Jr. for Tulsa World.

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"PreSentient" is not quite like anything Tulsa Ballet has done before, but the company performed with remarkable assurance. The duet by Diana Gomez and new dancer Jiyan Dai was a marvel of physicality, as the two dancers bent and twisted each other in ways that at times did not seem humanly possible.

Dai also was very good in a bravura solo, in which a single, solitary classical combination looked so out of place as to be jarring - another way of showing the organic roots of this choreography. Another newcomer, Chelsea Keefer, recently promoted from Tulsa Ballet II, had moments where her relative inexperience showed through, but otherwise acquitted herself quite well.

[dirac]

A story on Benjamin Millepied and the L.A. Dance Project by Ryan for Los Angeles Downtown News.

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While Millepied is the founder and visionary in chief of the L.A. Dance Project, the group is billed as a collaboration among five people. They include the composer Nico Muhly, who wrote the music for “Moving Parts,” a Millepied original that will have its world premiere in the Downtown shows (also on the bill are Cunningham’s 1964 “Winterbranch” and William Forsythe’s 1993 “Quintett”). Art consultant Matthieu Humery, producer Charles Fabius and film producer Dimitri Chamblas round out the team.

Although the company’s debut is in the most formal of L.A. stages, Disney Hall, Millepied said the goal is also to perform in more accessible venues, from rooftops to schools, and to work closely with an array of area artists. In the summer, for example, he partnered with local painter Mark Bradford for Framework, a series of three free performances inside the Museum of Contemporary Art. Millepied and company dancer Amanda Wells pirouetted amid paintings and gallery goers as a lone violinist plucked Bach and a recording of Bradford discussing his work played.

[dirac]

Tulsa Ballet honors the memory of Moscelyne Larkin.

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The memorial included montages of photographs, home movies, videotaped interviews and archival films of performances, narrated by Glenda Silvey, to tell Larkin's life story: from her childhood in Miami, through her performing career with such world-famous dance companies as the Original Ballet Russe and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, from her work as a teacher, to helping to build Tulsa Ballet into an internationally recognized company.

Punctuating various turning points in Larkin's life were live performances by Tulsa Ballet dancers and students of selections from ballets that were landmarks in Larkin's career.

[dirac]

An interview with Aaron Smyth of the Royal Ballet by Paul Bleakley in Australian Times.

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“I don’t think that I ever expected that I would one day end up in The National Gallery in London as a result of my dancing. It is definitely a surreal experience to see myself dancing in a place as significant as this.”

Prior to joining The Royal Ballet in early 2012, Smyth lived in New York City and trained with the American Ballet Theatre’s youth organisation. He first became a recognisable name through his participation in the 2008 series of Australia’s Got Talent, where his self-choreographed dance routines led to Smyth reaching the show’s grand finale.

[dirac]

A review of San Francisco Ballet's second program by Sarah Frater in The Stage.

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......Special mention to San Francisco Ballet’s music director and principal conductor Martin West who led the pick-up orchestra assembled for the company’s London performances. Orchestras informally assembled in this way can lack the finesse of permanent groups who work together all the time. However, under West’s experienced baton, they sounded as good as many long-standing orchestras.

[dirac]

Reviews of San Francisco Ballet.

Financial Times

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In this return to London after eight years, the San Francisco dancers are happy, bright with California’s sunshine, albeit with fewer of the half-lights that can give ballet its sophistications. Assured, slightly unrelenting, SFB’s casts danced and smiled through Balanchine/Mozart with a rictus of delight that made one long for them to learn that a favourite canary had dropped off the twig.

The Guardian

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It's a work to be seen again, as is Christopher Wheeldon's Ghosts, in which a stageful of diaphanously white-clad dancers are driven to moonstruck madness by the eerie dissonances of CF Kip Winger's score. They are sleepwalkers, haunted by spirits, and some of Wheeldon's most brilliantly imagined choreography plays with possibilities of trance and possession. A few passages drift towards inconsequentiality – largely when the music does – but Sofiane Sylve makes your hair stand on end as a witchy Queen of the Wilis, whirling her sisters into a ghostly frenzy before being borne away by her own demons.

[dirac]

Ivan Vasilievjoins American Ballet Theatre.

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Mr. Vasiliev and the ballerina Natalia Osipova created a stir nearly a year ago when they announced they were leaving Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet for the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg.

[dirac]

The dancer Olga Ferriis dead at 83. Item in brief.

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Ferri, who started as ballet dancer in 1954, died on Saturday.

She danced for forty nine years hitting the most famous stages of Brazil, Paris, Berlin and London.

[dirac]

A review of "The Golden Cockerel" by Gerald Dowler in The Financial Times.

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Ratmansky acknowledges and quotes Fokine’s choreography (film footage exists), so his new work emerges as a curious amalgam of past and present which, nevertheless, is unquestionably successful. He is, as are his Danish performers, steeped in mime, unafraid of large gesture, essential to the successful telling of this preposterous tale. The Cockerel herself (sic) is given movement of jerky brilliance, an impassive, even aggressive avian, cousine germaine to the Firebird and convincingly portrayed by the petite Lena-Maria Gruber.

[dirac]

A ballet school opens in the Gaza Strip.

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The ballet lessons remain an affair for a tiny slice of the community, as most of the 1.7 million people here are suffering the consequences of the stagnant economy and restrictions on movement.Last month, a UN report warned that Gaza may not be "a livable place" by 2020, citing shortages of water, food, schools, hospitals and jobs.

The attendants of the ballet classes have working or business- owner fathers and go to private schools that require a lot of money, Darwish explained, noting that as school year has started, the number of trainees dwindled to around 12.