Aterballetto embarks on a mini dance festival at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro

 ballet  No Responses »
May 152012
 


Ater­bal­letto and its cho­reo­grapher  come to ’s for more than 2 weeks with a mini Fest­ival of their rep­er­tory. Kick­ing off will be the Romeo and Juliet on May 17. It was cre­ated in 2006 and had a suc­cess in Milan the first time around at the Teatro Arcimboldi.

Never has a story been nar­rated as often, and has crossed as many geo­graphic, cul­tural and class bound­ar­ies, as . In our day, the myth crosses the social cat­egor­ies of the west­ern world, and is prob­ably the most well-known story of our cul­ture. Aterballetto’s take is very mod­ern and high-tech in Fab­rizio Plessi’s design and Bigonzetti’s choreography.

From the May 24 a double bill of Abso­lutely Free and H+ will take the stage.  In Abso­lutely Free Bigonz­etti allows the entire Com­pany max­imum gen­er­os­ity of inter­pret­a­tion and max­imum cre­at­ive free­dom; a col­lec­tion of old and new works, assembled without a real plot… free!

H+ is inspired by, not sur­pris­ingly, water: “Ori­gin and mother of all, pur­i­fier of souls and bod­ies, instig­ator of wars, an inali­en­able right con­ten­ded as an emblem of wealth. Its sig­ni­fic­ant sym­bolic char­ac­ter has ori­ented this work.”

Serata Strav­in­sky winds things up, open­ing on May 31 for four days. Les Noces from ten years ago and Le Sacre from last year will be joined by the world première of a new cre­ation Inter­mezzo. The work is for 4 pairs of dan­cers and uses the music of Suite Itali­enne.

Milan has an extraordin­ary lack of altern­at­ives to the bal­let com­pany at , and the Pic­colo Teatro’s ini­ti­at­ive is warmly welcomed.

 

Photo: Romeo and Juliet -  A. Ances­chi e R. Cavalieri

Tick­ets: platea €33, bal­conata €26 — Dis­counts with www.piccolocard.it

Book­ing and inform­a­tion: 848800304 — www.piccoloteatro.org

Adam Cooper talks to the Sunday Times about ballet, Michael Jackson, Vaughan Williams and the Kirov

 ballet, interview, musical theatre  4 Responses »
Apr 222012
 

In today’s Sunday Times, Adam Cooper - ex-Royal , and cur­rently tip-tapping in the West End — talked about the places where he and his elder brother, Simon, grew up. Until their teens they lived in a ‘poky’ flat in Tooting.

The flat was much too small for two ener­getic boys with a musi­cian father who had instru­ments, key­boards and sheet music every­where. Music was so much part of our lives. We used to sing in choirs when we were seven and eight years old.

But when he was thir­teen the fam­ily moved to a house in Nor­bury. Just as well since the grow­ing boys had star­ted to dance:

Sud­denly, I had lots of space, which gave me the oppor­tun­ity to make up routines for us. I cre­ated dif­fer­ent cho­reo­graphy and spent hours mim­ick­ing Fred Astaire and . They were our idols when we were grow­ing up. We were also into and Prince.

… con­tinue reading

An ‘imaginatively crafted delight’ or a ‘thin ballet’? The Royal Ballet’s Alice still divides the critics

 ballet, roundup  4 Responses »
Mar 252012
 

We know that the Royal Ballet’s dan­cers are excep­tional, we’ve seen that the designs and light­ing are magical, but the jury is still out on whether Chris­topher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adven­tures in sat­is­fies as a theatrical piece.

Clem­ent Crisp’s final para­graph from his Fin­an­cial Times review of the cur­rent run was,

But for all the unflag­ging ener­gies, phys­ical and emo­tional, that its cast brings to the cho­reo­graphy, this is a game of “keep it mov­ing and they won’t see the holes”. And the holes – the coarse score, the blus­ter­ing, false drama – are too large to disguise.

Which he’d already spot­ted on its first outing,

I was less than enrap­tured by this blatant affair at its cre­ation last year. In its cur­rent revival cer­tain changes have been made – sig­ni­fic­antly in split­ting an inter­min­able first act into two – but the sum effect is still of blaz­ing mis­con­cep­tions in sup­pos­ing that such a nar­rat­ive can admit of trans­la­tion into movement.

… con­tinue reading

Carla Fracci with Schaufuss, Vasiliev, Cragun, Jude and others on YouTube

 ballet, video  No Responses »
Mar 232012
 

 

In 1987 a two-part tele­vi­sion pro­gramme called The Baller­inas fea­tured Carla Fracci, with some of the top male dan­cers of the period, in a series of recon­struc­tions put­ting vari­ous bal­lets and their inter­pretors in an his­tor­ical con­text. Fracci was an amaz­ingly youth­ful 51 when she danced these extracts.

Dance Magazine critic John Gruen wrote:

The nine­teenth cen­tury clings to Carla Fracci like an invis­ible mantle — her aura, her look, her demeanor sug­gest everyone’s con­cep­tion of the romantic baller­ina. How fit­ting that this great poetic artist should por­tray some of her most fabled pre­de­cessors — the very baller­inas that, like Fracci, were the embod­i­ment of romantic fra­gil­ity and lyric classicism.

In The Baller­inas, a sump­tu­ously pro­duced two-part bal­let drama, Fracci places her rare artistry in the ser­vice of dance his­tory as she recre­ates roles first premiered by such lumin­ous baller­inas as , Emma Livry, Car­lotta Grisi, , Giusep­pina Bozza­c­chi, Car­lotta Bri­anza, Mat­ilde Kschess­in­ska, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsav­ina and Olga Spessitzeva.

… con­tinue reading

Victor Hochhauser goes to the High Court over Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker

 ballet  1 Response »
Mar 172012
 

The ’s  at London’s in Lon­don has led to a High Court battle, says The Tele­graph.

The 89 year-old pro­moter­Victor Hoch­hauser is suing the own­ers of the O2 Arena for more than £338,000.

I have worked in this busi­ness for the past 60 years and I have never had any dis­putes, I have never been to court in my life, not even as a wit­ness. All I want is the money I am owed by them – not a penny more and not a penny less.”

The Decem­ber per­form­ances of the bal­let made a sub­stan­tial loss. Hochhauser is suing Ansco Arena, the firm which runs the O2, alleging that Ansco is try­ing to charge him for venue costs of £324,000 without sup­ply­ing any under­ly­ing doc­u­ments or invoices for expenses incurred. Hoch­hauser says his expenses came to a total of £975,000, but Ansco has only paid £355,000, des­pite col­lect­ing income of £674,000.… con­tinue reading

Claire Motte, étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet, at the circus

 ballet  2 Responses »
Mar 162012
 

, étoile of the Opera Bal­let, died when she was just 48. She was a strik­ing beauty and pos­sessed a strong per­son­al­ity, such that cre­ated Esmer­alda for her in his bal­let Notre Dame de Paris.

Motte came through the school at the Paris Opera with teach­ers Car­lotta Zam­belli and Serge Lifar. Her strong tech­nique per­mit­ted her to join the com­pany when she was just 14, she became a première dan­seuse at 18, and étoile from 1960 until 1979.

Among the many bal­lets in which she cre­ated roles were Lifar’s Chemin de la Lumiere in 1957 and Roland Petit’s Tur­anga­lila in 1968.

She was seen on tele­vi­sion in the title role of Stravinsky’s The Fire­bird in 1972, and again in Phedre in 1973, the Jean Cocteau bal­let based on the Greek tragedy.

Rudolf Nureyev, who had been befriended by Motte before his defec­tion from the Kirov Bal­let in 1961, appoin­ted her bal­let mis­tress of the imme­di­ately after he became its artistic dir­ector in 1983.… con­tinue reading

Royal Ballet’s incoming director Kevin O’Hare leaves his first interview

 ballet, interview  2 Responses »
Mar 162012
 

Although Kevin O’Hare’s appoint­ment as the next dir­ector of the Royal Bal­let was announced months ago, it is only now that he has spoken about his new role. Up until now he has rightly let do the talk­ing in her final sea­son, but with the pub­lic­a­tion of the ’s 2012–2012 sea­son, which includes his first bal­let sea­son, he decided to talk to The Times’ Debra Craine.

Here are his words:

On his first season

I think it has made a big splash. There is lots of new work going on; I’m excited by it, and I will be build­ing on that. It’s a step for­ward. You have to think of the future as well, and there will be other big splashes through­out the next couple of years.”

On defec­tions

We are a big com­pany of 90 plus dan­cers and we have to think of them as a whole.

… con­tinue reading

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