dirac Posted September 18, 2022 Share Posted September 18, 2022 A review of the United Ukrainian Ballet by Vikki Jane Vile for Broadway World. Quote Elizaveta Gogdize's Myrtha is a thrilling central focus. She is authoritative, ethereal and demands your attention with her stage presence and sweeping leaps that cover the stage. The Wilis may be largely decorative but they are taking no nonsense when it comes to disposing of Hilarion in a whirlwind of collective turns that leave him reeling. Link to comment
dirac Posted September 18, 2022 Author Share Posted September 18, 2022 A review of Rupert Christiansen's Diaghilev’s Empire: How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World by Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian. Quote The story of Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes has been told many times before, but no one is able to master it more engagingly than Rupert Christiansen, the veteran opera critic and self-confessed “incurable balletomane”. He comes to his subject with a head stuffed full not just of pas de deux and grands jetés but also all the gossip and scandal that trailed in Diaghilev’s choppy wake. Everyone who was anyone in early 20th-century artistic Europe was attached at some time to his great modernist project, even if they mostly didn’t get paid. Pablo Picasso and Léon Bakst did scenery while Chanel consulted on the wardrobe. The choreographers included Michel Fokine, Léonide Massine and George Balanchine, which is as starry as you can get. Then there were the dancers: Vaslav Nijinsky, who appeared to be able to fly; “butterball” Lydia Lopokova, who married John Maynard Keynes; dying swan Anna Pavlova and Hilda Munnings from Essex, who preferred to be known as Lydia Sokolova. Link to comment
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