Thursday, August 3

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Reviews of the Australian Ballet in  Jewels at Covent Garden.

The Guardian

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On the musical front, the Royal Ballet Sinfonia are on top form under Australian Ballet’s musical director (and regular Covent Garden conductor) Jonathan Lo. Their opening chords of Emeralds are played with sublime delicacy as the curtain rises to reveal the dancers in absinthe-coloured tulle. Emeralds is a ballet of soft hands and endless bourrées that could easily glide past you, but you can also focus in on the details. Valerie Tereshchenko dances as if suspended in a dream state, in motion like soundlessly scudding clouds, with graceful attention to the movement of her head and neck.

The Daily Express

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The Australian Ballet impresses throughout, and those final minutes are breathtaking. There's a sense still of another gear yet to be found but this production is testament to a company brimming with exciting promise for the next 60 years.

The Jewish Chronicle

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The performance concludes with Diamonds, Balanchine’s homage to his classical Russian schooling. It is a display piece for the full company to show off its talents – and there is a lot of talent to enjoy. Ako Kondo and Brett Chynoweth tested each other to the limit in the Rubies pas de deux, while Benedicte Bemet and Joseph Caley (who only joined the company from the UK last year) garnered cheers for their Diamonds pas de deux.

 

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More reviews of the Australian Ballet.

The Daily Telegraph

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Dynamic duo Ako Kondo and Brett Chynoweth provide a red-hot display, all fizzing turns and a playful pizzazz that cries “Isn’t it fun to be us?”. Wonderful, too, is a bewitching Isobelle Dashwood: four men might be controlling her long limbs, but she has them under her spell. The concluding Diamonds is a crystalline triumph, right from the opening tableau – the dancers hovering like dainty icicles. It evokes the towering elegance of 19th-century Imperial Russia, while handily sidestepping any current political headaches, with graceful eddies of movement matching Tchaikovsky’s lovely musical flurries. 

Slipped Disc

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It’s evident that the Australians, though already proceeding along the right lines throughout, have way to go to make their “Jewels” great rather than brightly good. In all three, Balanchine was asking dancers to project their physicality with a three-dimensional energy as if into infinite space: the Australians are vivid but don’t yet dance as if changing the air high above tor beyond them. (A great “Jewels” shows you time-and-space physics on an immense scale.) 

The Times

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Selected by the company’s artistic director David Hallberg, Jewels entered Australian Ballet’s repertoire this season — another first. The staging is by Sandra Jennings, a former dancer turned teacher who has been doing the same on behalf of a vast number of Balanchine ballets internationally for nearly four decades. She clearly has passed her depth of knowledge on to Hallberg’s dancers. The first-night casts rose to the occasion, imbuing their performances with the requisite technical shine while revealing each work’s undercurrents of human feeling.

 

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And more:

Broadway World

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To the dancing, and the parfum of Emeralds. Sharni Spencer in the Violette Verdy role travels well with a generous sense of openness, but lacks the necessary dynamic to convey the choreographic chicness when needed. Valerie Tereshchenko brings statuesqueness to the party, but doesn't do nearly enough with the movement possibility - where's the 'step beyond the toe' spatial eagerness? Balanchine isn't the same everywhere, both in setting and execution, and The Australian Ballet production (at this point) misses the mystique one sees elsewhere - which is a vital component throughout, but unquestionably so during Emeralds.

Bachtrack

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Balanchine liked to put his ballerina on a pedestal with the danseur as her admirer, nowhere more so than Diamonds where, in their pas de deux, she seems like a wild creature – a swan or deer – to be caught and tamed, only for him to end up enthralled, gently kissing her hand at the close. Benedicte Bemet and Joseph Caley were the epitome of classical style, she elegant and elusive, he eating up the stage in great leaps and crowd-pleasing pirouettes. The corps did a fantastic job; you really needed an aerial shot to appreciate Balanchine’s geometric patterns and their crisply executed lines. 

The Stage

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A preview of Cape Town City Ballet's "Don Quixote."

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Don Quixote is staged by British-born Maina Gielgud, a world-renowned ballet dancer, director, and choreographer.

Her extensive career and deep understanding of the art form have earned her international acclaim and the utmost respect from the ballet community. She's bringing her remarkable talent to staging it here and it promises to be an unforgettable production of Don Quixote.

 

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A review of Chloe Angyal's new book "Pas de Don't."

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The story of Pas de Don’t follows Heather Hayes, a recently promoted principal dancer in the New York City Ballet’s company, who must suddenly navigate the fallout of an emotionally abusive relationship with one of the world’s most famous ballet dancers.

In the wake of this tumult, Heather accepts a guest position with the Australian National Ballet (ANB) — the only company that will hire her following the break with her ex-fiancé..........

 

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Carl Davis has died at age 86.

Classic FM

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Alongside his work for the big and small screens, Davis wrote a selection of concert works and ballet. He was commissioned by a number of high-profile ballet companies during his career including the Northern Ballet Theatre, Scottish Ballet, English National Ballet, and Birmingham Royal Ballet.

A 2021 Q&A with Davis from The Arts Desk.
 

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Watching the restored print of Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. with your score is a little like following a seamless full-length ballet.

Yes - the relationship between film and ballet is striking, and I find myself composing more and more ballet scores now, something which the film work has made me much better at. Though in ballet, you have to give the dancers more time; with film you have cuts. Though both are narratives, both genres have stories. I ask myself what is the film about – a romance, a war film, a comedy? If it’s based on something, I do my research. The first important question has to be ‘”is there a budget’? Can I use lots of players? With an epic like Ben Hur or The Thief of Baghdad (pictured, above left), you can’t cheat. But with a comedy, you don’t need 80 players – it can work with just a piano. I prefer having an ensemble though.

 

 

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A review of American Ballet Theatre's "Swan Lake" by Leigh Witchel for dancelog.nyc.

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Royal seemed disjointed from the production. It’s set up to have a disaffected Siegfried; everyone around him was acting as if he were dissolute or a ladies’ man. He seemed like neither. He paid careful attention to the women he danced with, but like a partner. Yet the tutor seemed concerned and the ladies tried to keep the tutor away from Siegfried.

The dancing in his solo showed off his beautiful line and phrasing in arcing renversés and one stepover turn to the next with a ramrod straight axis.

 

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A review of the Australian Ballet by Teresa Guerreiro for Culture Whisper.

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Generally well steeped in the style of Emeralds, the ensemble of 10 women moved as one when creating lines that soon dissolved into other lines. Shami Spencer and Callum Linnane danced the lead pas de deux with assurance, if not great chemistry; while among the soloists Drew Hedditch caught the eye in the pas de trois.

 

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The National Ballet of Ukraine will tour Canada.

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Montreal producer Paul Dupont-Hébert says the tour will include stops in Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver.

 

Tickets go on sale mid-September for “Nadiya Ukraine.” Nadiya means hope in Ukrainian.

 

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Complexions Contemporary Ballet makes its debut at Jacob's Pillow.

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Growing up in the 1970s, choreographer Dwight Rhoden was completely taken with rock star David Bowie, whose brilliant genre-bending, boundary-busting innovation made him arguably one of the most influential musical figures of the past century. “His music spanned every genre,” says Rhoden, the founding artistic director and resident choreographer of Complexions Contemporary Ballet. “Every album changed direction and he reinvented himself in his persona. He was a chameleon, courageous and unapologetic, no holds barred, just who he was, and that was empowering as a young person … I think there’s a little Bowie in all of us.”