Jane Simpson

Jane Simpson has written for Balletco since its very early days. She contributed regularly to Dance Now for its last 10 years and wrote for the Yearbook of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (2000 - 2009); she writes a 'London Letter' for the Washington-based quarterly, Dance View. She is based in London and also makes several trips to Copenhagen each season.

Jane Simpson Reviews (not just latest below)

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Answers to the last Balletco Quiz of the Year – 2011

by Jane Simpson January 30, 2012 Balletco

Here you go – the answers to the last Balletco Quiz of the Year – 2011.

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Book – Royal Danish Ballet in Photographs

by Jane Simpson January 13, 2012 Galleries

What a nice find! A casual Google search, a few weeks ago, led me to a book I’d never heard of but which has turned out to be doubly interesting as well as, already, a source of a lot of pleasure.

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Book – At the Sign of the Harlequin’s Bat, My Years with Cyril Beaumont

by Jane Simpson December 31, 2011 History

Fifty or sixty years ago, no true ballet-lover would have dreamt of visiting London without calling in at Cyril Beaumont’s famous bookshop in Charing Cross Road. The great and the good of the dance world went to learn from his vast store of knowledge, to reminisce about the golden years of the Diaghilev company, or just to exchange gossip…

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The last Balletco Quiz of the Year – 2011

by Jane Simpson December 25, 2011 Balletco

The last Balletco Quiz of the Year – 2011. And don’t worry we will give you the answers before we go!

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Royal Ballet – The Nutcracker – London

by Jane Simpson December 5, 2011 Reviews

The glory of the evening, though, was Marianela Nunez as Sugar Plum, substituting at only an hour or so’s notice for the suddenly indisposed Sarah Lamb, and thereby getting this one performance with Thiago Soares, whose partnering complements her so well.

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Scottish Ballet – MacMillan/Elo Double Bill – London

by Jane Simpson November 11, 2011 Reviews

If Kenneth MacMillan wrote anything finer than Song of the Earth, I haven’t seen it yet; and if I’ve been more moved by a performance of it, I’ve forgotten it.

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Royal Danish Ballet – Virtuosi Steps triple bill – Copenhagen

by Jane Simpson October 27, 2011 Reviews

Nikolaj Hubbe is certainly working hard on his mission to persuade the Copenhagen audience to love pure dance – this is the second triple bill in a row to offer only the faintest whisper of a plot.”

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Royal Danish Ballet – The Lesson, La Sylphide – Copenhagen

by Jane Simpson October 19, 2011 Reviews

The Royal Danish Ballet has been through a stressful time recently, what with one thing and another. Nikolaj Hübbe can’t have foreseen that when he chose this season’s opening programme, but he could hardly have scheduled one better calculated to steady the ship…

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Royal Ballet – Limen, Marguerite & Armand, Requiem – London

by Jane Simpson October 11, 2011 Reviews

Really, Frederick Ashton had it very easy. Making Marguerite and Armand in 1963, with Fonteyn and Nureyev – the two most famous dancers in the world – at his disposal, all he had to do was run up a couple of swoony pas de deux, surmount a bit of diva-ish behaviour from both of his stars, and voilà! – a smash hit

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Alexander Grant 1925 – 2011

by Jane Simpson October 2, 2011 News

We report with enormous regret the death, earlier this weekend, of the great character dancer Alexander Grant.

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DVD Review: 1958 Giselle with Nerina / Fadeyechev on ICA Classics

by Jane Simpson September 30, 2011 Interviews / Features

What really surprised me was how affecting her mad scene is. She plays Giselle in the first act as a very simple, unsophisticated and trusting girl, and when she discovers Albrecht’s duplicity it’s as if her whole world has shatterd and her mind simply can’t cope. It’s a plain, unornamented reading and I found it really quite moving.

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Exhibition: Frederick Ashton, the ballet and Suffolk

by Jane Simpson August 27, 2011 Interviews / Features

“Frederick Ashton, the ballet and Suffolk” could well be a sub-category of the delights awaiting us in heaven; for the moment, though, it’s the title of a series of exhibitions and events running through the summer in Ipswich, Suffolk’s county town.

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Mariinsky Ballet – Swan Lake Opening Night – London

by Jane Simpson July 26, 2011 Reviews

…the evening shifts to a much higher plane with the arrival of the swans in Scene 2: perfectly schooled, they move and even apparently breathe as one. Their Queen, Uliana Lopatkina, is a mystery to me. …I watch, interested in and impressed by what she does, but entirely unmoved.

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Peter Schaufuss Ballet – Romeo and Juliet – London

by Jane Simpson July 18, 2011 Reviews

Despite my reservations about what Schaufuss has done, I was very grateful for once to come out of a Romeo and Juliet not feeling I’d been hit with a sledgehammer – thanks partly to Graham Bond’s handling of the score, making it seem a lot less ponderous than usual.

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American Ballet Theatre in London – Programme 2

by Jane Simpson February 9, 2011 Reviews

After an opening night which concentrated on recent work, American Ballet Theatre’s second programme was more of a look back at its illustrious past, featuring two masterpieces associated with its first decade, more than fifty years ago. Theme and Variations followed by Lilac Garden – a prospect to make any balletgoer’s heart beat faster; add Paul Taylor’s wonderful Company B, hope for faithful productions and perfect casting, and we could be in dance heaven. It didn’t happen quite like that, of course…

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