Previous Ballet.co magazine - March - April 2005

Royal Danish Ballet

"But Abdallah is not to my mind one of the great Bournonville ballets. While it was well danced on this occasion, and while the action sped along, it seemed rather like a mish-mash of ideas and styles of performing. Somehow La Bayadere mixed with pantomime kept coming to mind."

"It's a wonderful climax to a fascinating ballet."

"James was the wonderful Thomas Lund, giving what was undoubtedly the finest performance I saw in the whole week....If you want to know what Bournonville is supposed to look like, this is it."

"The programme on Wednesday aptly combined two of Bournonville's "party" ballets which both have a big party scene in Act 2, thus naturally giving rise to a lot of joyous dancing - on the deck of the frigate in "Far From Denmark", and in a restaurant in a tea garden in "Konservatoriet"."

"Mads Blangstrup was an impassioned and ardent James, full of romantic intensity, and his dancing in his solos was equally splendid."

"At the end of the performance the Company Director, Frank Andersen, came on stage and promoted Kristoffer Sakurai to principal, an announcement that was greeted with huge applause and a standing ovation from the audience (how different, thought I, from some mean-spirited Brits)."

"Far From Denmark: "Finally, in these politically correct times some audiences may not appreciate black servants and "picaninnies" being played by blacked-up white dancers in woolly wigs and dancing what, for want of a better term, I can only describe as "golliwog" dances. In spite of all this, I find this ballet, if viewed in its historical context and remembering the taste and temper of its time, has a great deal going for it and, after 458 performances, may it long..."

"Last Saturday, under a clear sky and crescent moon, the 2005 Bournonville Festival closed with a spectacular firework display in Kongens Nytorv square in front of the Royal Theatre..."

New York City Ballet

"While both were inspired on their own, when Ringer and Martins danced together the effect was tremendous...Throughout the performance, the energy between this pair grew exponentially, sweeping the other dancers, the music, the audience along in its sway."

"Despite the ambitious daring of his choice of music and subject matter (it takes bravery, or hubris, to tackle something that's been done before, so well and famously), Wheeldon's delivered a ballet that's surprisingly meek and predictable."

"A dancer of sensitivity and power, with an unforced yet commanding presence emanating from the great strength of his unflappable center. If you never saw Soto partner, it might seem hyperbole to call him The World's Best Partner, in all its capitalized glory; but if you'd seen him, you'd know."

"Whelan was magnificently wild and fearless, playing off of Soto's contrasting and complementary solidity for the last time. It was beautiful and hearbreaking..."

"In all, it was an interesting program, especially the contrast between two all-American archetypes: Balanchine's cheerleaders and Robbins' hipsters."

"Boal was the embodiment of grace. And clarity, honesty, and joy."

"When it comes to campy endings, 'Union Jack's' is second to none: it's not every day you see a squad of dancers using semaphore flags to spell out "God Save the Queen" as the orchestra plays "Rule Brittania," and electronic cannon thunder. (It's even more fun than it sounds.)"

American Ballet Theatre

"It was extremely circusy, but nonetheless thrilling, and I liked that neither ABT nor some of ballet's greatest artists aren't above having a bit of fun, and enough of it to last until next year, if we're lucky."

"There are no bravura moments, although the lifts and balances appear fiendish, but the leaning and twining of their bodies and the undercurrents of abandon and violence showed all there was to know about Carmen and Don Jose's desires and fate."

"Gillian Murphy danced Raymonda, and it would be difficult to pile on too many superlatives...her formidable technique is completely subservient to her art."

"'Sylvia' is a treat to listen to and to look at, although not always to watch."

"I wish I could be charitable and attribute Solymosi's weakness to jet lag, but they haven't yet started flights from Pluto."

Mark Morris Dance Group

"I can talk of the subtlety of his musicality and composition, where sometimes barely discernible gradations build up to create worlds of difference, but that hardly scratches the surface: it's pure theatrical magic."

Paul Taylor Dance Company

"Although I came away every night increasingly impressed by vibrancy and charisma of Taylor's versatile and indefatigable dancers, and Taylor's stunning inventiveness, razor-sharp timing and sometimes frightening wit, such virtues only scratch the surface of Taylor's artistry. More than any choreographer I've seen, Taylor, out of little more than music and sweat, guides us through the landscape of human emotional experience."

San Francisco Ballet

"For balance, this season's number six is one home run."

"The glory came with Yuri Possokhov essaying the Phlegmatic with his particular eloquence of gesture; Muriel Maffre provided the dynamics for the Choleric. She could have stormed the ramparts as La Marseilles and the audience would have streamed behind her."

"The three Tybalts displayed ugly force, scarcely masked by formality, still less grace of spirit or manner."

San Francisco Ballet School

"The leads in all four sequences danced front and center with confidence and Daniel Devison fully made up for any discomfort he may have felt in Dawn. He positively sizzled, with flourishes."

Joffrey Ballet

"Clowns is an admirable ballet, but it is understandable if one prefers several seasons between its rightful revival."

Royal New Zealand Ballet

"...the RNZB exudes energy, passion and from the men some of the most nicely-finished, definite port de bras to be seen in Western ballet companies, the women right beside them."

Ballet San Jose School

"The production obviously stirred the students' imagination, for while many of them displayed technical nervousness and technical prowess short of rock steady, the spirit of engagement was palpable."

California Ballet Company

"This evening of two and a half hours of dance... was an ambitious undertaking with an enjoyable result."

California Ballet School

"At almost three hours in length, though typical of recitals for large schools, it is a bit physically long, but not mentally tedious."

Choreographers and Friends

"The pas de deux between Erika Johnson and Santos was wonderfully inventive; in its changes from floor rolls to pushes to climbing and crawling over each other, executed with unerring timing, it could stand on its own in other programs."

Cudamani

"Cudamani provides a glimpse of village daily process, giving us a context in which some of the familiar dances and the music is heard in traditional Balinese life."

Eifman Ballet

"Anna and Karenin make physical contact but she slithers away, potent, her remoteness testimony to their failure to connect."

"There is no flow of movement, there is no emotional journey from happiness to pain. It's an express train to madness...There needs to be some beauty between the angst."

Ink Boat

"Her face an oval of delicacy and strength enjoyed by some Korean women, Lee looked steadily, impassively at the audience, adding to the cultural complexity, an upright mysterious addition to the earlier two sections, a shamaness in nightclub attire."

Mansaku-No-Kai

"What I found captivating, even endearing, about the production was visual, visceral, generational."

Richmond Ballet

"Reviewing a regional ballet company is, all too often, like strangling a kitten: you might do a really excellent job, but no one will thank you for it. The latest kitten arrived last week at the Joyce Theater in the person of the Richmond Ballet..."

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival

" A review of many ethnic dance companies... "Concentrating on the music and dance traditions of Bali, Gamelan Sekar Jaya rivals the Irish ensemble in its popularity and frequence of appearance at the annual festivals."

" A review of many ethnic dance companies... "Whether striking the drums, clapping their sticks together, bending or whirling, the women (of Ong Dance Company) were a percussive high light, their intensity and skill unremitting."

Shochiku Grand Kabuki

"The Hindu ideal of the enlightened spectator or sahrdaya, describes the artistic experience as arising from the the artist and being completed heart of the sahrdaya. While not describing myself as such, Shochiku Grand Kabuki gave Zellerbach audiences full exposure to this ideal..."

Kirov Ballet

"In each of these two ballets, I saw a very young talented dancer in her early twenties who was fully in command of the ballerina role, and whose performance was a revelation to me...Viktoria Tereshkina showed the phenomenal progress that she has made..."

Paris Opera Ballet

"The two performances provided a clear view of the strengths of the Paris Opera Ballet. It highlighted the differences between the French and British aesthetic with the lesser reliance by the French, at the turn of the century, on detailed plot or elaborate design."

Alessandra Ferri

"The evening was divided into two camps. On one hand there's this pair of exceptional dancers, two of the finest ballet artists of their generations, Ferri and Hilaire. The other had young apprentices, ballet artists-in-the-making..."

Ballett Chemnitz

"A piece in which Cole Porter and 1920s good-times partying is rather spoilt by an odd murder. An audience-pleasing work that could usefully be developed further."

Hong Kong Ballet (HKB)

"The elementary emotions arising from sex, death and life make this production as raw as Hemmingway's bull ring, the choreography as dense and intense as anything McMillan produced. Grigorovich is one to watch if you want to learn the lessons of Spartacus' political importance (and have a jolly good sniffle); Irek Mukhemedev's is the one to watch if you want to get inside the skins of the characters and gain some understanding of the human achievements and dilemmas faced by the seemingly..."

"This is an intelligent production which offers much to enjoy."

Royal Ballet

"...this is Guillem at her heart breaking best. Cope bounds through the choreography exuberantly sweeping his Marguerite to her inevitable death in a torrent of love."

" Symphonic: "Ashton would have gloried in the technical brilliance of the six dancers, led by Alina Cojocaru and Federico Bonelli, including the brave young Steven McRae, just graduated from the RB School."

"This is a very attractive programme with a good mix of works."

"After a wait of nearly half a century Frederick Ashton's Ondine was finally ignited at last Wednesday's revival by the blinding talents of Tamara Rojo."

"Rojo is wide eyed and playful: her Ondine is inhuman, enchanting, unconscious of her charm and the chaos she causes."

"In one of the best performances of The Dream seen for a long time, Frederick Ashton's crystallization of Shakespeare's comedy of errors in Fairyland to Mendelssohn's ubiquitous score, the ensemble last Thursday had a refreshing physical attack and artistic conviction."

"By the end of the succeeding interval the whole thing is already beginning to blur in the memory, with the single exception of the section for Deirdre Chapman and Ricardo Cervera. Much better focused than the rest, and superbly danced, their duet is edgily erotic: it could well survive on its own, when the rest is history."

"Ashton parades Elgar's friends “pictured within” in a breathless series of vignettes, like turning the pages of the Picture Post."

"There are very few convincing depictions of married love in ballet. This is one. Yanowsky and Saunders strolled on for their curtain calls, arm in arm, like a couple out for a walk in the country."

"..even I had a little moisture in my eye during the Nimrod Variation when at the climax, Elgar (Christopher Saunders) lifts Lady Elgar (Isabel McMeeken) very gently, and very slightly from the floor. There is more love and emotion expressed between two people in that simple movement than there is in other choreographers' wild and extravagant pas de deux.."

"A thoroughly enjoyable evening all round - I wish there could be more like it."

"This is one of the rare instances where I felt that the fouettes were not just athletic and technical feats, but artistic as well. This was not Rojo showing us her turns, but Kitri continuing her flirtatious ways."

Kirov Ballet

"The Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff has scored a big triumph by hosting the Kirov Ballet who opened their two-week season on Tuesday with their spectacular production of Don Quixote."

"The first cast's Juliet was superlatively danced by a young 21-year-old coryphee artist, Evgenia Obraztsova... She captured the full emotional range of the role."

Royal Danish Ballet

"Technically Bournonville developed high speed accuracy from legs and feet while arms move with a broad, lyrical sweep. Caroline Cavallo and Thomas Lund demonstrated this discipline superbly in a duet from Flower Festival in Genzano, he a dynamo of controlled power, she with savagely precise footwork topped by easy flirtatiousness."

"Watching this programme one feels transported back in time to a simpler and gentler age (though it probably wasn't). There is a reticence, a modesty, a lack of flashiness, although there is no lack of virtuosity."

"In a fast, complex world, where everything demands attention and thought, this is dance (and music) as simple joyous pleasure."

Merce Cunningham

"Despite reservations about this particular combination of collaborators, the dance itself was a pleasure to watch."

Birmingham Royal Ballet

"Smart, cool and classy."

"Of the four ballets in BRB's Stravinsky 2005 programme... most would agree that two, Duo Concertant and Scenes de ballet, are masterpieces, but they were proceeded and followed by works that, to put it politely, were of lesser quality."

Rambert Dance Company

"Company director Mark Baldwin added sorcerer to his job title last week, nightly bewitching his audiences with a witty, beautifully danced and utterly captivating show. He entertained us both with works from before most of the audience was born right up to today with the sensational world premiere of his own Constant Speed.!"

"The abiding final impression is of a stage packed with more dancers than can have possibly been there, with several different kinds of movement happening at the same time in a kind of cheerful, highly organised anarchy. The audience loved it."

"It's years since I last saw Antony Tudor's Dark Elegies and I'd forgotten quite what a knockout it is. To my eyes it's a work of undoubted genius, justifying on it's own Tudor's place in the pantheon."

English National Ballet

"It says much for Deane's vision, and the honesty of the ENB's dancers, that the opening night survived with the gaping hole at its heart opened by Amatriain and Vogel."

"The opening night's cast was strongly led by two young principals of the Stuttgart Ballet - Friedemann Vogel and Alicia Amatriain - who were featured on the publicity posters. I had never seen these two lovely dancers before..."

"This is a beautifully designed, dramatically coherent, traditional Giselle (complete with a considerable sprinkling of mime), but one that nonetheless has a welcome freshness about it: an attribute that should help retain the support of those who might be watching a ballet for the first time."

George Piper Dances

"It feels like a couple of weeks since the curtain went up. The intention is to tell the story through intense snapshots of emotion, but the boys lose the plot in a fog of innuendo and understatement."

"It was a dance work that seemed to be still in development with a narrative that asked too many questions of its audience."

Northern Ballet Theatre

"This little gem has an infinite shelf life, as long as it never grows up."

"This is a dance pantomime with a generally greater emphasis on the pantomime narrative than on the dance."

St Petersburg Ballet Theatre

"Dmitry Shevtsov revelled as the jester and, as if one superb male role in addition to the Prince were not enough for one ballet, there is Rothbart. Dymchik Sayeev was sheer magnificence in his evil: in movement and gesture the Russian you pay to see. Here could be a megastar on the way."

"...Svetlana Markova's Coffee solo, part Persian, part Hindu, was utterly spellbinding. Many will have rushed back on subsequent nights just for this."

Akram Khan

"...layers of the heavy significance favoured by the lesser contemporary dance makers, made more impenetrable by the transcendental programme note and accompanying text."

"Khan is simply magnificent: as a warrior; as a story-teller; and as an instrument of rhythm."

"This performance is a tour de force on the part of Akram Khan, and his musicians delight."

Ballet Central

"There are eight pieces of new and established choreography, and the dancers acquitted themselves very well in all of them."

Grupo Corpo

"...the dancers of Brazilian Grupo Corpo have you gasping in amazement..."

Jaleo Flamenco Dance Company

"Jaleo simply cannot get away with a third-rate show, shoddily presented, and more of the same will mean that flamenco again becomes a private function accessible to the few."

London Childrens Ballet

"There you have it: a grisly murder, a gruesome death, a grim reaper, and a ghost story, topped off with plenty of inventive, and often slapstick, humour. Even the yukky romantic bits couldn't stop this from being a rip-roaring children's classic!"

Motionhouse Dance Theatre

"Passages of intensely physical theatre are entwined with tranquil sequences of reflection."

National Beijing Opera Company

"...it all adds up to a unique combination of physical grace and beauty, Keystone Kop humour and breathtaking tumbling."

Nederlands Dance Theatre

"The choreography really came alive in the duets and quartets which were less self-indulgent than the solos and provided the company with an opportunity to exhibit their flawless technique and polished performance."

Robert Cohan Gala

"For anyone who wanted to know about the history of contemporary dance in the UK, here was a chance to sample the works one of its founding figures, and hear the choreographer in conversation. "

Sunarno Dance Company

"The Ramayana dance-drama provided a brief window onto the cultural world of the islands in the Indian Ocean, an area which has been on our minds much more than usual this year."

Swansea Ballet Russe

"It's not every day of the week that you can see a 7 turn pirouette; Mr Mureuv seems to perform this feat very casually, just dropping one nonchalantly into the middle of the performance. Miss Vdovicheva is very radiant as Swanilda, bringing her to life as a headstrong girl, more than ready to give Franz the short shrift."

Tero Saarinen

"Tero Saarinen's piece is not expressly about Shakerism: it merely uses their society and their quest to achieve a “Heaven on earth” through unquestioning devotion to God and to each other as a device for choreography that encapsulates the strongest bonds of community and purity."

Trisha Brown Dance Company

"Being at the edge is a risky business: sometimes it works - and I can savour the memory of 'Glacial Decoy' any time - but often you fall off."

Turned on Tap

"The two real stars of the evening, however, were the Americans Jason Samuels Smith and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, who both blew the audience away with their style, their technique and their raw energy."

Vienna Festival Ballet

"VFB director Peter Mallek's production is faithful to tradition and although Bognor is one of the two smallest stages (with Maidstone) on their current five-month tour, the paring down in scale from the opulent great sweep seen in the big venues is not unrealistic, nor difficult to assimilate."