English violinist Charlie Siem strikes a pose in Vogue

 music  No Responses »
Aug 312011
 

25 year-old Eng­lish viol­inst is in the latest edi­tion of . “Hand­some almost to the point of absurdity” is writ­ten in the first para­graph, and com­ing from that’s not a bad com­pli­ment. He also plays the violin quite well, and that dis­tin­guished font of musical cri­ti­cism, Clas­sic FM called him “one of the most excit­ing young violin tal­ents around”.

The Times revei­wing his 2008 Elgar record­ing said, “Charlie Siem unusual is his emo­tional con­trol – so firm, and so Brit­ish, that it bites into the power of his oth­er­wise flu­ent account of Elgar’s Violin Sonata”.

His third album, with the , is out at the end of Septem­ber with con­cer­tos by Henryk Wieni­awski and  and a piece by .

Visit his site to read the com­plete art­icle, or get to your news-stand now.… con­tinue reading

French police find 150kg of cocaine smuggled in ballet shoes

 ballet  No Responses »
Aug 312011
 

French police seized 150 kilo­grams of pure cocaine hid­den in a ship­ment of smuggled in from the Domin­ican Repub­lic, Le Par­is­ien news­pa­per repor­ted yesterday.

Nar­cot­ics police arres­ted two Domin­ic­ans last week at the French cap­it­als Charles de Gaulle air­port in a sting oper­a­tion and tracked down the ship­ment to an apart­ment in the east of Paris. The men were part of a Domin­ican gang that also owned prop­er­ties in The Neth­er­lands and Spain, police said.

French police said the Domin­ican Repub­lic was a major hub for drugs head­ing from South Amer­ican car­tels in Colom­bia and Venezuela to west­ern Europe, the report said.… con­tinue reading

Alan and Marilyn Bergman on Barbra Streisand and her definitive version of Windmills of Your Mind

 music  No Responses »
Aug 312011
 

Streisand’s new album, “What Mat­ters Most,” is a trib­ute to the Alan and and their music. The Bergmans spoke with Reu­ters about the album and their long rela­tion­ship with Streis­and. Here are some excerpts:

Mar­ilyn

Other people have sung ‘Wind­mills of Your Mind,’ but really, we think hers will be the defin­it­ive ver­sion It’s the nuances and the lay­ers of mean­ing that per­haps we meant but didn’t hear ourselves. They are all high­lighted when she works, she really works at it. She strives for excel­lence. You can read that as being a per­fec­tion­ist but not in the sense that has become pejor­at­ive. She wants to make some­thing the best it can be… She’s aware of the per­man­ence when you write some­thing or per­form some­thing, and she sees her respons­ib­il­ity as mak­ing some­thing as good as it can be.

Alan

What Mar­ilyn said is true. We can’t dis­miss all those things we talked about that go into the notes and interpretation.

… con­tinue reading

Carlos Acosta “a genuine product of the Revolution” receives Cuba’s 2011 National Performing Arts Award

 awards, ballet  No Responses »
Aug 312011
 

Cuban dan­seur and cho­reo­grapher Car­los Acosta was bestowed with the 2011 National Per­form­ing Arts Award, which he devoted to Fernando, Alberto and , founders of the National Bal­let of that trained him as a bal­let dancer.

“I owe them what I am,” he said at ’s Gar­cia Lorca Grand Theatre to a stand­ing ova­tion. He also devoted the award to his fam­ily, espe­cially to his father, who intro­duced him to bal­let and thought him the value of humble­ness, and to all the teach­ers along his career. Acosta described dan­seurs , and Andres Wil­li­ams, “the Prince of Prin­cesses”, as his guides and early day inspiration.

Car­los Acosta, 38, has become the young­est bal­let dan­cer in Cuba to be honored with the pres­ti­gi­ous award of the Coun­cil of the National Per­form­ing Arts for its con­tri­bu­tion to dance and ballet.

“He is a genu­ine product of the Revolu­tion,” said cho­reo­grapher and the Jury Pres­id­ent Ivan Tonorio when he announced the ver­dict last April.… con­tinue reading

James Franco pulls out of Broadway début with Nicole Kidman

 theatre  No Responses »
Aug 312011
 

James Franco will not be mak­ing his Broad­way debut in ’ this autumn. The 127 Hours star had been set to appear oppos­ite in the play, which tells of an age­ing act­ress and the gigolo who exploits her. Franco’s pub­li­cist did not state why the 33-year-old was no longer involved.

Sweet Bird of Youth had been one of most anti­cip­ated plays this sea­son because of Franco and Kidman’s involvement. In an inter­view with the New York Times, how­ever, dir­ector David Cromer said the revival would now not hap­pen this autumn.

The ori­ginal Broad­way pro­duc­tion of Sweet Bird of Youth opened in March 1959 star­ring and . The play, which ran for 10 months and was nom­in­ated for sev­eral Tony awards, was later made into a film with the two act­ors repris­ing their Broadway roles.

via BBC News… con­tinue reading

Grand Gala at the Kremlin with stars from Hamburg, Stuttgart, Bolshoi, Mariinsky, Mikhailovsky and Béjart companies

 ballet  No Responses »
Aug 312011
 

Stars from the Ham­burg Bal­let are head­ing to Moscow for a Krem­lin Gala show on Septem­ber 17 and 18. Soloists will per­form vari­ous pieces by , the artistic dir­ector of the Ham­burg Bal­let, who will be the spe­cial guest at the gala .

Two lead­ing soloists of the Ger­man troupe, Héléné Bouchet and Thi­ago Bor­din, will dance the “Adagi­etto” from Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Sym­phony and “Med­it­a­tion” from Neumeier’s “Illu­sions — like Swan Lake.”

The Krem­lin Gala pro­gramme will also fea­ture a pas de deux from “La Dame aux Camélias” by Bav­arian National Bal­let dan­cers Lucia Lacarra and Marlon Dino.

The Mariinsky’s prima baller­ina will première a new work by Cana­dian cho­reo­grapher, , with his com­pany La La La Human Steps.

Both even­ings will also see per­form­ances by the bright­est stars of the Rus­sian stage, includ­ing dan­cers from the Bolshoi and Mari­in­sky Bal­let troupes, as well as per­formers from the and Béjart Bal­let.… con­tinue reading

Diana Vishneva to star in Neumeier‘s “Dialogues”

 ballet  No Responses »
Aug 302011
 

US cho­reo­grapher will stage ‘Dia­logues’, a pro­duc­tion com­pris­ing three one-act bal­lets set on music by Span­ish com­poser Fed­erico Mompu, and star­ring bal­let prima of the Theater in Saint Peters­burg, , as well as Ben Schultz, Andrei Merkur­iev and Thi­ago Bordin.

The first night is sched­uled for Novem­ber at the Stan­is­alvsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater in .

via Voice of Rus­sia… con­tinue reading

The Australian Ballet gets ready to celebrate 50 years of dance down-under

 ballet  No Responses »
Aug 302011
 

The Aus­tralian Bal­let has launched its  pro­gram to cel­eb­rate its 50th anniversary in 2012.

Reveal­ing the sea­son rep­er­toire in Mel­bourne today, Artistic Dir­ector David McAl­lister announced new com­mis­sions — includ­ing a tra­di­tional Swan Lake — along with clas­sic reviv­als of audi­ence favour­ites, an all-Australian dance party and a spe­cial inter­na­tional gala. This mile­stone sea­son is the cul­min­a­tion of a three-year pro­gram show­cas­ing the company’s rich his­tory and achieve­ments. McAl­lister says the cham­pi­on­ing of ori­ginal works is a bold move into the future.

In this his­toric year, it was import­ant that we hon­our our past by bring­ing back some of the mas­ter­works that have shaped our iden­tity. In the Icons triple bill, we’re reviv­ing ’s trail­blaz­ing cre­ation The Dis­play from the 60s; ’s ground­break­ing fusion of clas­sical and con­tem­por­ary in the sem­inal 70s work Gem­ini; and Graeme Murphy’s mov­ing por­trayal of a young male dan­cer in his 1980 work Bey­ond Twelve. This pro­gram is a fant­astic oppor­tun­ity for bal­let fans of all gen­er­a­tions to glimpse a snap­shot of the com­pany through­out the decades.

… con­tinue reading

Doctors release a new bulletin on Salvatore Licitra’s medical condition

 opera  No Responses »
Aug 302011
 

Doc­tors at released the fol­low­ing bul­letin today on the crit­ical con­di­tion of tenor , who was severely injured when he came of his motor­bike on the even­ing of August 27:

“Dur­ing the night mon­it­or­ing of his res­pir­at­ory activ­ity and a CAT scan of his chest revealed due to the impact suffered when he came off his motor­bike. As a res­ult his lungs were care­fully cleaned via a bron­coscopy this morn­ing. After the removal of sub­stances caus­ing the inflam­ma­tion of the lungs, his breath­ing, although still con­trolled by a vent­il­ator, returned to nor­mal.”… con­tinue reading

 Older Entries

Switch to our mobile site