Monday, January 29

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Yuan Yuan Tan will give her farewell performance on February 14.

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Tan has been with the company for an astonishing 29 seasons, joining as a soloist in 1995 and being promoted to principal dancer two years later by then-Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson.

 

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Ballet West presents "Swan Lake."

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Sklute told us that Ballet West Founder William Christensen created the first full-length American production of Swan Lake in 1940 when he was the Artistic Director of San Francisco Ballet.

Since then it has been reworked by each artistic director at Ballet West.

 

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Tamara Rojo is interviewed by Lyndsey Winship in The Guardian.

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Such is the long-lead planning of a ballet company that only now is she about to present her first season, with some notable British influences. We’ll come to that later, but how is she finding the difference between working in the UK and the US? “The obvious difference is the lack of public funding here,” she says, speaking over video call. San Francisco Ballet has to raise its funds from donors. “That takes a lot of your focus and time, to get buy-in from individuals.” But there’s a positive side, too. “I find it very inspiring to meet people who have been supporting the company for 40 or 50 years. It’s good for an artistic director to be in tune with the audience a bit more.”

 

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A review of "La Strada" by Louise Levene in The Financial Times.

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A great story, a strong score, three world-class dancers: what could possibly go wrong? Plenty. A new ballet version of Federico Fellini’s 1954 film La Strada was given its world premiere by Alina Cojocaru and her company on Thursday night. The storytelling is lackadaisical and confusing, characterisation is thin and the undistinguished choreography is redeemed only by the artistry of the production’s three stars (hence the three-star rating).