Sunday, April 24

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Former Royal Winnipeg Ballet dancer Richard Rutherford has died at age 87,

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Richard Rutherford, 87, was found dead April 15 inside a home on Smyth Road.

Police have charged a 69-year-old Ottawa man with second-degree murder in Rutherford's death, but have shared few other details publicly about how he died.

 

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Reviews of the Royal Ballet in an Ashton triple bill.

The Guardian

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Emotions are on hold in 1948’s fabulously retro Scènes de Ballet, a chic piece of mid-century modern set to Stravinsky, with precisely ruled geometry, pizzicato steps and a touch of melodrama in its sharp gestures. Reece Clarke holds the stage with charismatic stillness and Yasmine Naghdi is so crisp, bright and efficient there’s not a jot of energy wasted.

The Independent

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The Royal Ballet’s celebration of Frederick Ashton is a luscious treat. It shows different sides of the company’s founder choreographer, from the chic of Scènes de ballet to the romantic drama of A Month in the Country. And the dancers rise to its challenges with delight.

 

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A review of New York City Ballet by Siobhan Burke in The New York Times.

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The vocabulary registers instantly as Tanowitzian, full of idiosyncratic footwork and gesture: little trots in place with swinging arms; a hand circling the head as if wielding a lasso; heel-clicking jumps with flexed feet. The energy tends toward the clipped and fragmented, with what could be single sweeping movements broken down into their component parts.

 

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A review of the Royal Ballet by Mark Pullinger for Bachtrack.

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In the evening performance Laura Morera, a seasoned Ashtonian dancer, captured every nuance of Natalia Petrovna’s wistfulness, tenderly partnered by the ever-youthful Muntagirov. Mica Bradbury was sparky as Katia, the maid who flirts with Belyaev and pops berries into his mouth. But it was the matinee cast which gave the more moving performance, led by Marianela Núñez as a lip-quiveringly emotional Natalia Petrovna, quick to anger – she gave O’Sullivan’s Vera a real slap when she discovered her ward flirting with Matthew Ball’s youthful Beliaev – but also seeped in resignation when her young admirer departs. Every turn of the head was loaded with meaning. All the characters came alive – Luca Acri’s playful Kolia, Gary Avis’ devoted spaniel of a Rakitin – and the timing was absolute perfection, especially the comic scene where Natalia’s bluff husband, Yslaev (Christopher Saunders), has lost his keys and all the characters bump into each other in the search for them. Each pas de deux was delicious, Núñez simply melting in hold. The audience melted too.