My First Ballet: Sleeping Beauty, English National Ballet (ENB) & English National Ballet School, New Theatre, Oxford, 30th April 2016 – Maggie Watson reviews

Saturday afternoon at the New Theatre (5.00pm performance) was an extremely happy occasion, with an auditorium full of little girls (and one or two boys) mostly accompanied by their mothers. ENB’s cut-down version of The Sleeping Beauty is pitched somewhere between a pantomime and a ballet, the story narrated by an actress playing the adult Aurora as she watches the rest of the cast dance, mime and act out the fairy tale. An advantage of this approach is that it restores to prominence the nineteenth-century mime scenes.

The cast consisted of very young dancers from the English National Ballet School, and it is frustrating that although the programme gave their names with photographs, there was no cast list included. One of the great pleasures of the afternoon was to see so much energy and emerging talent, but I am unable to name individual dancers with any certainty.

 

The Royal Ballet in Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon: live transmission at Phoenix Picturehouse 16th October 2014

A welcome opportunity to see The Royal Ballet in a ballet which has established itself as one of the great 20th century narrative works.  The Phoenix Picturehouse will be showing a live transmission of  Kenneth MacMillan‘s Manon from the Royal Opera House on Thursday 16th October.

Manon Lescaut is a beautiful young woman who falls prey to the moral corruption of 18th century Paris.  Set to music by Jules Massenet, MacMillan’s ballet brings Manon’s story vividly to life, evoking the brutality and decadence described in the Abbé Prévost’s infamous novel, as well as the feckless character of Manon herself – torn between love for the poet Des Grieux and her desire for money and attention. The cast of complex characters includes the callous Monsieur GM, the swaggering Jailer, Manon’s roguish brother Lescaut and his coquettish Mistress; but at the ballet’s heart are the duets MacMillan created for Manon and Des Grieux, which are among the most emotionally intense and erotically charged ever choreographed.

 

Royal Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet at the Phoenix 22nd March

If you didn’t manage to make it see the Bolshoi’s Le Corsaire last weekend, here is another chance to see one of the world’s great ballet companies here in Oxford in a live relay performance from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden:

The Royal Ballet in

Romeo and Juliet

7.15pm Thursday 22nd March 2012, Phoenix Picturehouse

Romeo and Juliet was Kenneth MacMillan‘s first full-evening ballet and, from its premiere in 1965, it has been one of The Royal Ballet’s signature works, popular all over the world.

At the beginning of the ballet MacMillan’s crowd scenes teem with life and colour. It’s a pleasure to be able to follow the characters created by members of the corps de ballet as they portray the townspeople, market traders and servants of the rival Montagues and Capulets.

However, once Romeo and Juliet meet, everything else on stage can only be scenery for their story. Three great pas de deux: the meeting in the ballroom, the balcony scene and the morning after the wedding eloquently convey the narrative: adolescent shyness and fascination; the headlong rush of love declared; and the grief of parting. The final scene in the tomb, a pas de deux with a lifeless partner, is devastating.

The Royal Ballet has performed Romeo and Juliet well over 400 times, yet each performance is subtly different. Every pairing in the title roles brings fresh nuances to the young lovers’ characters, while the wealth of supporting roles, from the exuberant trio of harlots in the town square to the murderous rage of Tybalt, offers scope for dancers throughout the Company. Nicholas Georgiadis’s earthy Renaissance designs, with some of the original details recently restored, are the perfect backdrop, and Sergei Prokofiev’s music is one of ballet’s greatest and best loved scores.

Running time: 190 Minutes

These relays are selling out, so book your tickets quickly!  Either online by selecting a time, or call the Box Office:
0871 902 5736 (10p a minute from a landline)

http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/Phoenix_Picturehouse/film/Roh_Live_Romeo_And_Juliet/