Ballet

Wings of desire: film still of Natalia Makarova and Anthony Dowell in ‘Swan Lake’, 1980

Will the real Swan Lake please stand up

21 February 2015 9:00 am

Ismene Brown unpicks the great enigma of ballet theatre

London International Mime Festival review: on juggling, dance and Wayne Rooney's hair transplant

31 January 2015 9:00 am

January is something of a palate-cleanser for the year, as the London International Mime Festival flies in plane-loads of companies…

Better than Leslie Caron: Leanne Cope (Lise) and the company in ‘An American in Paris’

An American in Paris: a zingy new Wheeldon dance-musical that you won’t want to miss

3 January 2015 9:00 am

A new year must start with hope and resolution, and if you’re very rich, with influence in the highest places,…

‘This era’s supreme objet d’art’: Sylvie Guillem in 1985, aged 19, in her Paris Opera dressing-room

Sylvie Guillem interview: ‘A lot of people hate me. Bon. You can’t please everybody’

15 November 2014 9:00 am

On the eve of her retirement, Sylvie Guillem talks to Ismene Brown about legs, boobs and changing people’s lives

Thomas Ades’s Polaris at Sadler’s Wells: the dance premiere of the year

15 November 2014 9:00 am

This has been an extraordinarily exciting fortnight, on and off stage. Premieres in anything from ice-skating to classical ballet, charismatic…

All was beauteous with the Royal Ballet’s ‘Symphonic Variations’ on the first night

Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet battle for the heart of English dance

1 November 2014 9:00 am

English ballet erupted out of the second world war in the hands of the rival choreographers Frederick Ashton and Robert…

Plisetskaya in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, 1964. She was one of the supreme trophies in the Soviet display case, the most garlanded, the most suspected

Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin: ‘The KGB put a microphone in our marriage bed’

25 October 2014 9:00 am

Ismene Brown talks to the Russian super-couple Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin about ballet, opera and the KGB

Does a tart like Manon have a place in the Royal Ballet repertoire?

4 October 2014 9:00 am

What can the Royal Opera House be insinuating about its target audience? No sooner had Anna Nicole closed than Manon…

Constant Lambert at the piano

The wit, wisdom and womanising of Constant Lambert

24 May 2014 9:00 am

Philip Hensher on the tragically short life of the ebullient and multi-talented musician, Constant Lambert