dance
Olivier Awards 2010: All SurprisesMonday, 22 March 2010
Furthering their reputation as the least predictable prize-giving organisation out there, the Laurence Olivier Awards last night gave their top prizes to a host of productions that have long departed London, starting with Best Play for Tennessee-born writer Katori Hall's The Mountaintop. You were thinking Enron or (my personal best) Jerusalem? You'd be wrong. Read more... |
Film Q&A Special: Only When I DanceMonday, 30 November 2009
There are gunshots outside in the street, a boy sits behind his front door desperate to get to ballet class, the two sides of his life colliding in front of his eyes - reality and dream. It’s a favela in Rio, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, a vast estate of poverty riddled with drug crime and addicted young lads with no future other than dealing, until they get shot or jailed. Ballet... well, what an irrelevance. Read more... |
Interview: Anne-Marie Duff plays Margot FonteynFriday, 27 November 2009
Anne-Marie Duff doesn't really resemble Margot Fonteyn. Blonde, fresh-faced and blue-eyed, she has nothing of the exotic, olive, Latin complexion that Fonteyn inherited from her Brazilian grandfather. And she never learned ballet, even if, with her long, lean frame and elegant swan neck, she looks more like a dancer than the rather more compact Peggy Hookham of Reigate (as Fonteyn started out in life). Read more... |
How To Design The NutcrackerSunday, 22 November 2009
Christmas ballet would be unthinkable without The Nutcracker. But what kind of Christmas should it be? This year the UK fields an astonishing array of visions, from Biedermeier formality at the Royal Ballet, to Fanny and Alexander romanticism at Birmingham Royal Ballet, Elvis cartoons at English National Ballet, and expressionist German psychodrama at Scottish Ballet. Read more... |
Psychoanalysing BalletSaturday, 31 October 2009
As a new biography of the Royal Ballet's great choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan by Jann Parry reveals, MacMillan's ballets are often about characters in shadowy explorations of inner states of mind. Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Duke Bluebeard's Castle, The Rite of Spring, ENOTuesday, 27 October 2009
theartsdesk's podcasts with broadcaster Edward Seckerson continue with a look at the English National Opera's new production of two 20th-century masterpieces: Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Daniel Kramer takes on the mysterious Bluebeard, while Michael Keegan-Dolan and his Olivier Award-nominated dance company, Fabulous Beast, tackle the uncontrollable forces of Stravinsky's infamous Rite. |
Ballet Meets ScienceThursday, 24 September 2009
Two ballets are premiered this month with big scientific subjects and new commissioned scores. Birmingham Royal Ballet's David Bintley was inspired by Einstein's principle of relativity, with a Matthew Hindson score, while Mark Baldwin at Rambert Dance Company has been excited by Darwin, with a Julian Anderson score. How does science meet dance?
Einstein+Birmingham Royal Ballet: e=mc2 by David BintleyRead more... |
The Messerer DynastyWednesday, 09 September 2009
When Carlos Acosta danced Spartacus with the Bolshoi Ballet in London in 2007, the man, the time and the place united the strands of a most extraordinary story in ballet, a story of peregrination, of dreadful reverses, of the pursuit of civilisation, of holding on to the best of human values in despairing times. Read more... |
Frozen Moments of MagicFriday, 04 September 2009Read more... |
Antonio Gades, Flamenco MasterThursday, 22 July 2004
Antonio Gades, who died on 20 July 2004 in Madrid aged 67, was a giant of modern flamenco, a magnetic dancer and theatrical director who gained an international audience for flamenco while guarding its unique and complex character. Read more... |
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