Friday, November 5

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Reviews of the Royal Ballet in 'Giselle.'

The Guardian

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Natalia Osipova is an out-of-this-world Giselle. When she debuted the role with the Royal Ballet in 2014 it was a revelation, especially her second act where the dead girl rises as a wili (the spirit of a betrayed woman). She inhabited the ghostly being as if truly possessed, tossed into the air, breaking out of the music’s frame and ballet’s politeness to create something extraordinary. Opening a new season of the 19th-century ballet (Peter Wright’s production, after Petipa), Osipova has lost none of her supernatural glow.

The Times

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It looks wonderful too. John Macfarlane’s designs in the first act are a symphony of soft autumnal colours for this Rhineland village — it’s grape harvest time, after all — and elegantly spooky in Act II for the supernatural goings-on in the moonlit forest where Giselle’s grave is hidden away in shame (a suicide, her body is forced to lie in unconsecrated ground). The riches of the production are completed by Adolphe Adam’s iconic score conducted, on this night, with Russian flair by Boris Gruzin.

The Jewish Chronicle

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It helps that she was partnered by Reece Clarke as Albrecht. He is one of the tallest dancers in the company and has the authority to portray the duplicitous aristocrat. He towers over Osipova and makes light of all the overhead lifts. He performs his own solos with style – his petit batterie is particularly impressive.

Bachtrack

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Osipova’s consistent proficiency of technique – a steel piston inside a silk sheath – underpins the excellence of her performance but the nearness to perfection comes from her quality and journey of expression, particularly in the first act, which draws us inexorably into her dilemma and the path that we know will lead to Giselle’s suicide. Some interpreters dance before acting out the illness of a weak heart, but Osipova integrates that human weakness into her movements at the end of key phrases. She is living the role and no matter how many times we have seen the ballet, never has it been performed quite like this and that is because Osipova somehow manages to bring this unique freedom to overlay an unalloyed command of her technique. Nowhere is this clearer than in the so-called “mad” scene, to which Osipova brings a painfully slow, unfolding dramatic burn that is refreshingly different from any other interpretation.

 

 

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A review of the Birmingham Royal Ballet by Zoe Anderson in The Independent.

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Carlos Acosta took over as director of Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2020, after a celebrated career as a dancer. Despite pandemic delays, he’s making smart use of his own star power. For the London premiere of this triple bill, choreographer Goyo Montero added a new duet to his 2003 ballet Chacona. Danced by Acosta and guest ballerina Alessandra Ferri, it shows off the charisma of two mature dancers. Yet this sprinkle of stardust doesn’t pull focus from the company, who dance with heart throughout.

 

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A review of the Royal Ballet by Emma Byrne in The Evening Standard.

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Matching Osipova in technique, if not always in intensity, is Reece Clarke, making his debut as Giselle’s lover-cum-betrayer. The pair made a splendid partnership in last year’s pre-Covid Onegin; this time their duo is more muted, although there are lovely intimate moments and spectacular feats, not least Clarke’s impressive – and fiendishly difficult – sequence of entrechat six. The lovers’ parting and Albrecht’s redemption weren’t quite as tragic as they could have been, but the foundation is there to build on nicely.

 

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Louisville Ballet gets ready to return to the stage. (TV news clip.)

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Louisville Ballet prepares for first in-person performance since start of pandemic

 

[dirac]

An interview with Ruth Essel.

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After years of studying the art form, Essel — also known as @thecurvieballerina on Instagram — started Pointe Black, a ballet school based in south-west London, as a much-needed response to the overwhelming lack of inclusivity within the dance world in the United Kingdom. The creation of the school, which Essel described as a moment of "divine intervention after years of encouragement from friends and family", was a melding of passions.

 

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A review of Ballet Black by Mark Monahan in The Telegraph.

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This is classy choreography – showing the super company off at their very best – in which women are often lifted by one or more men, but always with complete tenderness; not like powerless playthings, but as if being helped and encouraged to soar. And at the close of this complex, 40-minute odyssey of incident and emotion, Robinson is once again performing solo, but the others, though seated, are facing her, rapt with attention, which is to say that she is now perhaps not really alone at all. Far from contradicting this note of optimism, the ensemble’s closing, downcast faces seem to suggest just how far the world still has to go.

 

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Misty Copeland is interviewed for Washington Post Live.

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So it’s been 25 years of research--you know, whether that was leading ballerinas--Black ballerinas, hearing their stories about other dancers and kind of creating, you know, this lineage. But we don’t have a documentation of our history. I think most people when they hear ballet, they don’t think of a Black ballerina. But maybe today they do with me, you know, with the reach and platform I have, but that’s not typically what you think of because our stories aren’t told and they’re not documented.

 

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An interview with Lauren Cuthbertson.

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“It wasn’t that I wanted to give up ballet,” she stresses. “But pregnancy produced a very unusual reaction in me. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like dancing, even for fun. In fact, I was filled with the very real fear of not wanting to dance again. Luckily, eight weeks after I had Peggy, it was like a spark inside me was lit and I knew I had to go back. I found the love of dance again.”