Ballet News | Straight from the stage – bringing you ballet insights

Ballet News Reviews | Northern Ballet’s The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby Northern Ballet Sadlers Wells, London 14th May 2013 The Great Gatsby isn’t, at first sight, a story that lends itself easily to ballet. The complex characters make it difficult to get the whole story over to an audience with no words. However, the [...]

Ballet News Reviews | English National Ballet’s Ecstasy & Death Ecstasy & Death Petite Mort | Le Jeune Homme et la Mort | Etudes English National Ballet London Coliseum 18th April 2013 Opening in silence, with six men partnering six foils, Jiri Kylian’s Petite Mort premiered with aplomb. Marize Fumero and Vadim Muntagirov mastered everything. The choreography is demanding and requires [...]

Ballet News Reviews | The National Ballet of Canada’s Romeo & Juliet Romeo & Juliet The National Ballet of Canada Sadlers Wells, London 17th April 2013 26 years is a long time to wait. The National Ballet of Canada eventually returned to London last night and the most important thing to say is that it was worth [...]

English National Ballet’s Tamara Rojo profiled I recently announced that Tamara Rojo will be profiled on The South Bank Show. Over an hour, the documentary attempts to get under the skin of English National Ballet’s latest Artistic Director, Tamara Rojo, as she takes on the dual role of artistic head and principal dancer. The programme comprises [...]

Ballet News Reviews | The Mikhailovsky Ballet | Laurencia Laurencia The Mikhailovsky Ballet London Coliseum Tuesday, 2nd April 2013 Laurencia is Mikhail Messerer’s production based on Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna. It’s a short ballet – less than 2 hours including the interval – and it fairly zips along. It felt a little flat after [...]

Ballet News Reviews | The Mikhailovsky Ballet, Don Quixote Don Quixote The Mikhailovsky Ballet Saturday 30th March 2013 London Coliseum Unadulterated happiness. That’s what you get from Natalia Osipova & Ivan Vasiliev. From the first hint of a castanet their effervescence and enthusiasm draws in the audience and it’s infectious. They are so accomplished, so suited [...]

Ballet News Reviews | The Mikhailovsky Ballet, Giselle Giselle, ou Les Wilis The Mikhailovsky Ballet Tuesday 26th March 2013 London Coliseum What a night. One of those rarer-than-hens-teeth nights in the theatre when you’re transported into the ballet and time stands still. The sets for the Mikhailovsky Ballet’s Giselle are beautiful – first rustic and [...]

Ballet News Reviews | Dancers – Behind the scenes with The Royal Ballet There are, from my experience as a commissioning editor, just a couple of exceptional ballet photographers. I can count them on the fingers of one hand and I’d still be able to pour the tea. By exceptional I mean a photographer who goes beyond the capabilities of their camera, [...]

Ballet News Reviews | Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Aladdin Birmingham Royal Ballet Aladdin London Coliseum Wednesday, 20th March 2013 Bedazzled, with bells on. That’s how you’ll feel if you watch Birmingham Royal Ballet’s spectacular Aladdin, choreographed by David Bintley, with its sumptuous costumes by Sue Blane (yes, some of them had snakes wound around their torsos), a crescent moon, [...]

Ballet News Reviews | Ravel Girl by Audrey Niffenegger This story is the beginning point for Wayne McGregor’s next premiere for The Royal Ballet. All the ingredients for a new fairytale are here : transformation, medicine, unlikely lovers, technology and a Prince. Suspend reality for half an hour and you’ll unearth the fairytale you may (not) have dreamed [...]

Ballet News Reviews | Titian | Metamorphosis: A collaboration between The Royal Ballet and The National Gallery It’s not often that a book comes along that is so compelling that you find yourself totally absorbed within its pages for hours at a time. Titian | Metamorphosis is one such rarity. If you missed the Imagine : Dancing with Titian programme, [...]

The Mariinsky Ballet | The Nutcracker DVD Having a snow day or two ? Then this DVD, released in December 2012, will keep you entertained until you can’t avoid going out any longer! The Mariinsky Ballet’s The Nutcracker, danced by Alina Somova and Vladimir Shklyarov, with Alexandra Korshunova as Masha and Fyodor Lopukov as Drosselmeyer was [...]

Ballet News Reviews | English National Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty Sleeping Beauty English National Ballet London Coliseum Wednesday, January 9th 2013 English National Ballet dance Kenneth MacMillan’s production of The Sleeping Beauty (after Marius Petipa), and MacMillan regarded it as the most important classical ballet. This company, especially Tamara Rojo, dance it with the required gravitas. Dressed in Nicholas [...]

Ballet News Reviews | Tatiana Leskova : A ballerina at large Tatiana Leskova is one of the last surviving pupils of dancers from the golden age of the Imperial Russian Ballet; the daughter of exiled Russians whose mother, Helena, conceived her in Venice, Italy, and born in Paris in 1922. This biography, first published in Brazil and [...]

Ballet News Reviews | The Fairytale Princess This beautiful hardback book takes you into a fairytale world, with Su Blackwell’s paper sculptures made from the pages of old books, bringing Wendy Jones’s retelling of classic stories to life. There are seven stories : Cinderella, The Frog Prince, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Princess and the Pea, [...]

Ballet News Reviews | English National Ballet’s The Nutcracker The Nutcracker English National Ballet London Coliseum Wednesday 12th December 2012 Party guests and puppets, magic, snow and glitter.  All the elements are there for the taking in The Nutcracker. Wayne Eagling’s production for English National Ballet brings a nephew from Military school (Vadim Muntagirov), a [...]

Ballet News Reviews | Ballet by Henry Leutwyler What a year it’s been for photography books connected to ballet! Darcey Bussell’s lavish photo-biography arrived within reinforced packaging, and then we had the utterly fabulous Dancer’s Among Us from Jordan Matter; an altogether different look at dancers with a spring in their step, and now an [...]

Ballet News Reviews | Lottie Lottie is a ballet doll designed for children aged 3+. She comes in a box wrapped with green tissue paper and is the result of a year of research and development with scientific expertise from leading British academics, with consumer research, specifically to address parental concerns about other fashion dolls [...]

Ballet News Reviews | Birmingham Royal Ballet in Opposites Attract Birmingham Royal Ballet’s dancers are on top form over three different styles in one night that make up Opposites Attract – Take Five, Lyric Pieces and Grosse Fuge. David Bintley’s Take Five is jazzy (The Dave Brubeck Quartet) and split into 6 sections – Take [...]

The Royal Ballet Yearbook 2012/13 If you’ve never picked up the Royal Ballet Yearbook you might be wondering what they are and why you might be tempted to read this year’s book. The answer is that it’s a mash-up of two season : looking back over the one just gone and previewing the current season. [...]