Royal Ballet July Offerings Romeo and Juliet and Sleeping Beauty

[Ashton Fan]

These are the latest Royal Ballet performances to be made available to a worldwide audience during shutdown.

Romeo and Juliet is being shown today at 7pm London time and will be available for a further fortnight.

Now I know that I often feel that MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet is in danger of being done to death and that I would appreciate it much more if it were rested for several seasons and replaced, say by Ashton's version, but this is a performance that I shall be watching as the leading roles are taken by Yasmine Naghdi and Matthew Ball. It was a revival of this ballet a couple of seasons earlier which made London audiences sit up and take notice of both dancers as potential company principals. The ballet is strongly cast and if I recall correctly Juliet's Friends at this performance included at least one dancer who was almost certainly making her final appearance in that role.

Sleeping Beauty is being shown on 24th July at 7 pm and will also be available for a further fortnight.

The cast is led by Fumi Kaneko and Federico Bonelli. It goes without saying that this is a ballet which gives the audience the opportunity to see a lot of the company in action. This performance is of great interest as Kaneko was replacing a senior dancer at short notice and had, I think, only made her debut as Aurora a few days earlier with a different partner. Kaneko is another dancer to watch and whose career is likely to be of interest.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 10, 2020 by Ashton Fan

[Mashinka]

Although I would swap MacMillan's R&J for Ashton's version any day, I have to say that the present crop of RB dancers seem to have resuscitated the old warhorse.    I am however bitterly disappointed that the performance by Francesca Hayward and Cesar Corrales  wasn't recorded for posterity.  In my opinion it was the best interpretation of the ballet that I've seen in decades and as Ms Hayward actually won the Critic's Circle award for 2019 for her Juliet I'm clearly not the only one to have been awestruck by her.

[Dégagé]

On 7/12/2020 at 6:27 AM, Mashinka said:

Although I would swap MacMillan's R&J for Ashton's version any day, I have to say that the present crop of RB dancers seem to have resuscitated the old warhorse.    I am however bitterly disappointed that the performance by Francesca Hayward and Cesar Corrales  wasn't recorded for posterity.  In my opinion it was the best interpretation of the ballet that I've seen in decades and as Ms Hayward actually won the Critic's Circle award for 2019 for her Juliet I'm clearly not the only one to have been awestruck by her.

I would have loved to see this as well. My commiserations to you. 

Edited July 17, 2020 by Dégagé
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