The bitchy world of ballet
Memoirs of old men, baldly, tend to be tricky. Sir Peter Wright, one of the founding pillars of the British…
Young at heart
The second half of the Bolshoi tour brought much fresher fare than the first: following the ubiquitous warhorses Don Quixote…
Young at heart
The second half of the Bolshoi tour brought much fresher fare than the first: following the ubiquitous warhorses Don Quixote…
Poetry in motion
For almost 60 years, whatever the political weather, Russia and Britain have maintained mutually assured respect as far as ballet…
Poetry in motion
For almost 60 years, whatever the political weather, Russia and Britain have maintained mutually assured respect as far as ballet…
All in the mind
Mark Morris, the most musically communicative and naturally lyrical of choreographers of the past 30 years (and an absentee from…
All in the mind
Mark Morris, the most musically communicative and naturally lyrical of choreographers of the past 30 years (and an absentee from…
Double trouble
The Bolshoi Ballet’s wunderkind ballerina Natalia Osipova defied received wisdom when, in 2012, she cast off from the great Moscow…
Double trouble
The Bolshoi Ballet’s wunderkind ballerina Natalia Osipova defied received wisdom when, in 2012, she cast off from the great Moscow…
Moor four
Paradoxically, some ballet masterworks absolutely depend on tiptop performing to demonstrate how great they are. If they don’t get it,…
Moor four
Paradoxically, some ballet masterworks absolutely depend on tiptop performing to demonstrate how great they are. If they don’t get it,…
Swan upping
Was Tamara Rojo, when she danced Swan Lake last Saturday at the Albert Hall, thinking as she shaped each phrase,…
Swan upping
Was Tamara Rojo, when she danced Swan Lake last Saturday at the Albert Hall, thinking as she shaped each phrase,…
Emotional intelligence
The difference between a poor ballet of the book (see the Royal Ballet’s Frankenstein) and a good one — indeed…
Losing the plot
If a football manager produces a string of losses, the writing is on the wall and out he goes. He’s…
Fade to grey
Every ballet company wants a box-office earner. But why Scottish Ballet’s leader Christopher Hampson kept on at David Dawson until…
The female gaze
Tamara Rojo programmed three female choreographers for her English National Ballet spring bill because, she said, she had never danced…
An American in Paris
Paris Opera Ballet plays hard to get. It doesn’t deign to travel all the way over here, thanks to a…
Black magic
Ballet’s romantic mantra could be summed up by John Keats’s ballad ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, in which a young…
Second thoughts
You revisit an old love with wariness. Time’s passed for both of you — sharp edges have been smoothed, and…
Sex on legs
That joke about the young bull who tells the old bull, ‘Hey, Dad, see all those cows — let’s run…
Notes on a scandal
How could it possibly go wrong? The magnetic, seething Russian star Natalia Osipova playing the tragic woman in John Singer…
Unforgettable fire
How much of a compromise does a fashionable choreographer loved by all have to make with his paymasters? When he’s…
Turkish delight
I’ve seen some people saying that English National Ballet’s Le Corsaire is so out-of-date it’s risible to see it staged…
Off the page
Dance has its own archaeological periods, and 2016’s schedules are confirming what 2015 indicated — that the era of dances…
