Friday, March 22

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A review of the Royal Ballet in a MacMillan triple bill by Amanda Jennings for Bachtrack.

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Throughout the piece, there are clear references to choreographic work MacMillan admired; Ashton is there, especially Scènes de Ballet, Balanchine is there in the fiendishly complex ingenuity of the step-sequences and fast changes of direction, but there are glimpses of MacMillan’s unique future development in the lifts and pas de deux construction. Danses is a veritable explosion of ideas. All this visual splendour coalesces with Stravinsky’s lush score to create a sensory feast. For the dancers there are significant challenges; there was the odd ragged moment (musicality is the key in work like this) but overall they rose to the occasion, especially Vadim Muntagirov, Sae Maeda and Joseph Sissens. Isabella Gasparini, replacing Anna-Rose O’Sullivan, brought charm to a role created on Maryon Lane, a ballerina whose high-instepped shoes are never easy to fill.

 

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A review of the National Ballet of Canada by Gianmarco Segato for Bachtrack.

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Given its literary underpinnings, and with character names such as Lotus, Leo, The Daemon and The Undermined, UtopiVerse is clearly meant to convey a narrative which unfortunately wasn’t always clear. Yong has choreographed some genuinely inventive, challenging movement but the piece lacks a binding dramaturgy to pull it all together.

Paula Citron reviews the NBC for Ludwig Van.

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Ottawa-born Portner is a star on the rise in the international ballet scene. This duet for two women, making its North American debut, was created for the Norwegian National Ballet and is, astonishingly, the choreographer’s first work for a ballet company.

Prior to this piece, Portner had a very eclectic career in contemporary dance, music videos, and musical theatre, not to mention a tap dance collaboration. The overwhelming success of Islands, however, has led to a string of ballet commissions, and that is where her present career seems to be taking root.

A review of the NBC by Rebecca Ritzel in The Globe and Mail.

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Overloaded contemporary dance works best when the movement vocabulary makes no attempt to compete with elaborate visual elements. Yong’s intentionally awkward choreography only piles on the what-on-earth-is-going-on-here weirdness.