Birmingham Royal Ballet’s triple bill at Sadler’s Wells was a delightful and varied evening of dance. The programme opened with Ruth Brill’s interesting 2017 work Arcadia, danced to John Harle’s stunning saxophone accompaniment. Tyrone Singleton, a sinuous and predatory representation of the god Pan, weaves in and out of shadows cast on the stage against a background of huge arching trees, lurking and watching three nymphs. Through the influence of the goddess Selene (the elegant Delia Mathews) he is reformed, shows more respect, and becomes a better leader. This wishful topical narrative seemed a little forced, but Atena Ameri’s stylish designs and Peter Teigen’s lighting were highly effective, and the Chorus performed their bouncy choreography with energy. (more…)
November 8, 2017
Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler’s Wells: Arcadia, Le Baiser de la Fée and ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café. 4 November 2017, evening performance
Posted by susiecrow under reviews | Tags: Arcadia, ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Brandon Lawrence, Céline Gittens, David Bintley, Delia Mathews, Igor Stravinsky, John Harle, Le Baiser de la Fée, Maggie Watson, Mathias Dingman, Michael Corder, Ruth Brill, Sadler's Wells Theatre, Tyrone Singleton |Leave a Comment
November 18, 2016
Wrights & Wrongs: my life in dance, by Peter Wright with Paul Arrowsmith – Maggie Watson reviews
Posted by susiecrow under reviews | Tags: Brenda Last, Christopher Wheeldon, David Bintley, Giselle, Glen Tetley, Kenneth MacMillan, Maggie Watson, Matthew Bourne, Michael Somes, Oberon Books, Paul Arrowsmith, Royal Ballet, Sadler's Wells, Sir Peter Wright, Tatiana Leskova, Wayne McGregor, Wrights and Wrongs |1 Comment
This is ‘not a conventional autobiography’ but it is a fascinating and inspiring account of 75 years of work in dance and theatre. Immensely humorous, Wright seems to have known almost everybody in the ballet world, and he conjures up vivid images of dips in the freezing January sea with Henry Danton at Eastbourne in the 1940s, Princess Margaret backstage at the Birmingham Hippodrome holding her breath to avoid the whiff from the gents’ loo, or of Michael Somes who could be ‘very difficult’, ‘particularly at full moon’.
For those of us outside the professional ballet world, the book sometimes ‘joins the dots’, and fills the gaps that other, more discreet, accounts have left in obscurity. I imagine that Wright’s colleagues and acquaintances will have looked for their names in the index with some trepidation, for he is almost as frank about the living as he is about the dead. (more…)
October 20, 2014
Birmingham Royal Ballet in Shadows of War, Sadler’s Wells, Saturday 18th October evening – Maggie Watson reviews
Posted by susiecrow under reviews | Tags: Birmingham Royal Ballet, David Bintley, Flowers of the Forest, Gillian Lynne, Kenneth MacMillan, La Fin du Jour, Maggie Watson, Miracle in the Gorbals, Robert Helpmann, Sadler's Wells Theatre, Sir Arthur Bliss |Leave a Comment
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s triple bill with ballets by Kenneth MacMillan, Gillian Lynne after Robert Helpmann, and David Bintley, is a subtle commemoration of the centenary of the First World War. The approach to the subject is oblique compared with the English National Ballet’s innovative programme Lest We Forget, premiered at the Barbican earlier this year, but it works.
Kenneth MacMillan’s La Fin du Jour evokes the heady days of the years between the wars, the dancers wearing in pastel coloured costumes, their fashionable sportiness reminiscent of some of the later Diaghilev ballets. They are Bright Young Things but they move like puppets on strings in their cream coloured box, from which we glimpse a garden through a door at the back of the stage. The two principal women dancers (Arancha Baselga and Karla Doorbar) morph from swimmers into aviators as their male attendants sweep them through the air, or turn them on point, slowly spinning them like skaters, feet held high behind their heads, weather vanes revolving in the wind. At the end one of them symbolically closes the door to the garden. An idyll is over and war is coming. (more…)