Three of Kenneth MacMillan's first five works are once more wholly, or partially, revived in this outstanding and purposeful debut for the Viviana Durante Company
Two complex works of genius, showing different aspects of the suffering of women, bring together The Royal Ballet and English National Ballet to honour Sir Kenneth MacMIllan
Virtuosity commanded the stage in the first half, drama and mood in the second, with Liam Scarlett’s new ballet a fitting tribute to the retiring Zenaida Yanowsky
An incredible musical performance - by pianists and singers - that is not well enough matched by the visual experience of cluttered creativity in which excellent dancers are often anonymous
Christopher Wheeldon’s The Winter's Tale(created for The Royal Ballet in 2014) is back on the Covent Garden stage this month and is as fresh and pristine second time around.
This summer marks 25 years of excellence by Ardani artists. A gala celebrating this milestone brings together Natalia Osipova, Ivan Vasiliev, Edward Watson, Marcelo Gomes, Joaquin de Luz, Denis Matvienko and Friedemann Vogel.
The Royal Ballet marks the centennary of the First Wolrd War with a reflective, and commemorative programme. With works by Branstrup and Wheeldon, as well as a Scarlett world première.
This production is beautiful to look at and has interesting, atmospheric commissioned music. With The Winter's Tale it is evident that inventive choreographer Wheeldon and The Royal Ballet have another hit on their hands.
Choreographer Arthur Pita’s production of The Metamorphosis – I hesitate to call it a ballet, for it is much more than that – is an eerie, thrilling and wonderfully collaborative piece of dance, led most assuredly and most grotesquely by Royal Ballet principal Edward Watson, here touring to the Joyce Theater, New York.
When the cast sheet warns the audience that there will be gunshots in each act, you know you are not at The Nutcracker. Kenneth MacMillan’s 1978 ballet Mayerling is famously about sex, obsession, madness and death – a cocktail that apparently sells enough tickets to ensure its regular revival at the Royal Opera House.
There isn’t much to say about Arthur Pita’s The Metamorphosis that hasn’t already been said. Returning the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio Theatre, this award-winning production is a dance-theatre imagining of Franz Kafka’s novella of the same name. I missed this production the first time, so was very interested in seeing it the second time around, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Last Friday, The Royal Ballet presented an exciting bill composed of George Balanchine’s iconic Apollo (1928) and two new ballets by acclaimed choreographers Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon. The programme was cleverly designed, since Ratmansky and Wheeldon are renowned explorers of the neoclassical style inaugurated by Balanchine.
Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 invited artists from different disciplines, mainly the visual arts, dance and music, to respond to Titian's three magnifient paintings of the Diana and Actaeon myth. The results are displayed in an exhibition at the National Gallery (alongside Titian's originals), and in an triple bill of new ballets at the Royal Opera House.
The Royal Ballet's 2011 reimagining of Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice stories was a glorious triumph, as proved by its immediate, slightly reworked revival for the 2012 season.
Edward Watson does angst expertly. The Royal Ballet principal proved himself as a convincing drug-ridden, suicidal Crown Prince Rupert in MacMillan’s ballet Mayerling and he was a nervy, jittery bespectacled White Rabbit in Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now he’s a bug and literally climbing the walls.
