Sunday, May 22

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Profiles of William Bracewell and Reece Clarke.

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Bracewell, the son of a landscape gardener and midwife, started classes when he was about eight after a friend asked him if he would take part because she had no boys in her show. His mother, Patsy, encouraged him because he “was quite hyperactive as a child . . . it was a good way for me to burn off some of that energy”.

Bracewell’s father, Les, had tried unsuccessfully to get him interested in rugby.

Related.

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William Bracewell, 31, from Swansea, arrived at the company in 2017 from the Birmingham Royal Ballet, having started ballet classes aged eight after he was asked to take part in a show by a friend who needed boys in her cast.

 

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Boston Ballet music director Mischa Santoro talks about conducting "Swan Lake."

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“The musical language is significantly more complex than other 19th century ballets, including those by Tchaikovsky,” he added. “There’s a foreshadowing of the end at the very beginning so a lot of the numbers that in a more usual composition would be lighthearted … here they have a sense that something more serious is happening.”

 

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An interview with Natalia Osipova.

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Osipova will be dancing with her fiancé, the American Jason Kittelberger, who works at the Rambert dance company as a rehearsal director. He plays José, a third of the story’s tragic love triangle. “Jason is an amazing contemporary dancer and choreographer,” Osipova says. “I enjoy working with him because he has opened up a different world of dance and shown me how to use my body in contemporary dance, which has a much heavier physicality than classical ballet. For a ballet dancer it’s difficult. We always try to fly, but a contemporary dancer absolutely has to feel contact with the floor.”

 

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Louisville Ballet announces its fall season.

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Fall productions start off with Artistic Director Robert Curran’s “Coppélia,” which is a classical ballet set in Louisville’s historic Germantown neighborhood. You can also see “Celebrating Alun” on stage in the fall. It honors the artistry and legacy of former Louisville Ballet Artistic Director, Alun Jones; and the annual holiday must-see, “The Brown-Forman Nutcracker.”  

 

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Sara Mearns returns home to perform at the Spoleto Festival USA.

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So her career has continued to new heights with new projects and praise, and the rigorous training that a dancer endures to stay on top of his or her game. Mearns incorporates a lot of cross-training in her daily regimen, and with a healthy presence on Instagram, she often shows impressive work with heavy weights and props that test balance and flexibility to their limits.

 

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A review of New York City Ballet by Ivy Lin for Bachtrack.

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The performance I attended was lovely in every way. This ballet simply works. Unity Phelan had just made her debut yesterday, but was already dancing her third Titania of the weekend due to Covid cancellations and injuries. If she was tired, she didn’t show it – she’s a natural Titania in that she’s tall, majestic, with plenty of hauteur. What she doesn’t have as yet is the goofy, eccentric humor that some Titanias inject into the role. Her duet with Bottom (Gilbert Bolden) remained on the serious side.

 

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A review of the Zurich Ballet in "Peer Gynt" by Sarah Batschelet for Bachtrack.

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As Peer, William Moore portrayed the cockiness and egotism of a character whose abuses seemed interminable. He dazzled with physical prowess and stamina, regardless of the legion demands on his body. The final pas de deux with his Solveig was as lyrical as it was convincing. Just as Ibsen had expounded upon in Act 5 of his play, by comparing the revelation of inherent goodness in his main character to the peeling of an onion, layer after layer, the errant Peer is ultimately transformed for the good by the power of, and slow exposure to, human love.