| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 14-May-2013 Sadler's Wells | Northern Ballet's The Great Gatsby at Sadler's Wells |
 Goodness, Northern Ballet are an appealing company. Their dancers are cheerful, charismatic and talented; their ethos one of hard work and unflagging dedication to outreach, bringing the delights of ballet to as wide an audience as possible across their mostly northern catchment area. A new full-length story ballet based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, choreographed by David Nixon, is the perfect project for this energetic, enthusiastic ensemble – the characters are strong, the locations distinctive, the atmosphere unforgettable.Read full review... | |
| 19-Apr-2013 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling makes a darkly compelling night at Covent Garden |
 When the cast sheet warns the audience that there will be gunshots in each act, you know you are not at The Nutcracker. Kenneth MacMillan’s 1978 ballet Mayerling is famously about sex, obsession, madness and death – a cocktail that apparently sells enough tickets to ensure its regular revival at the Royal Opera House.Read full review... | |
| 12-Feb-2013 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Ecstatic Ashton from The Royal Ballet |
 Be warned – after an evening of concentrated Frederick Ashton, you may well find yourself exhibiting the physical symptoms of ballet ecstasy.Read full review... | |
| 12-Dec-2012 Staatsballett at Deutsche Oper | Berlin Staatsballet dance John Cranko's Romeo and Juliet to perfection |
 John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet (set to Prokofiev’s score) is the ballet that made me fall in love with ballet. I had been dancing since I was tiny, and had seen the usual complement of Nutcrackers and Sleeping Beauties, but it was the balcony scene of this Romeo and Juliet, Scottish Ballet’s default production until the late 90s, that first made me giddy with delight; the bedroom scene that first made me cry.Read full review... | |
| 17-Nov-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | A fitting memorial: Kenneth MacMillan triple bill at Covent Garden |
 With all the new works put on by The Royal Ballet this year, we haven’t seen as much of Kenneth MacMillan’s choreography as usual. This triple bill of mid-century works is an in-your-face reminder of what an omission that is: Concerto, Las Hermanas and Requiem show MacMillan at his versatile best, and The Royal Ballet are on top form to match.
Read full review... | |
| 15-Nov-2012 Royal Opera House: Linbury Studio Theatre | A celebratory night of dance at the ROH with Wayne McGregor's FAR |
 FAR stands for Flesh in the Age of Reason, the title of Roy Porter’s last, magisterial work (tagline: “How the Enlightenment transformed the way we see our bodies and souls”). Porter’s book is a history of the relationship between flesh and spirit in the 18th century.Read full review... | |
| 3-Nov-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Top-notch contemporary ballet from The Royal Ballet's new trinity of modern choreographers |
 With the triple bill Viscera / Infra / Fool’s Paradise, The Royal Ballet have confirmed the status of their new holy trinity of choreographers: Wayne McGregor, Christopher Wheeldon and Liam Scarlett. McGregor and Wheeldon already had official choreographic affiliations – as Resident Choreographer and Artistic Associate respectively – and it was announced on Friday that Scarlett will now be joining them, hanging up his dancing shoes with immediate effect to concentrate on choreography as The Royal Ballet’s first ever Artist in Residence.Read full review... | |
| 26-Oct-2012 Sadler's Wells | An Autumn Celebration with Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells |
 When The Grand Tour was premièred in 1971, the cast of celebrities it satirises were still well known, even though their 1930s heyday had passed. The problem with this rather lovely little work now is that its references are just too far in the past: neither the dancers nor the audience know who these exaggerated oddballs – Gertrude Lawrence, Theda Bara – were, or what they were famous for.Read full review... | |
| 23-Oct-2012 Sadler's Wells | Birmingham Royal Ballet's first mixed bill at Sadler's Wells is a bit too mixed |
 Opposites Attract was the title chosen to tie three pieces together in Birmingham Royal Ballet’s first triple bill at Sadler’s Wells this week, but that was optimistic: these three were so different in both style and quality that it was hard to find any affinity between them, or any sense of the company as a whole.
Read full review... | |
| 8-Oct-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | The new Royal Ballet season opens with some old magic |
 Swan Lake is so iconic that describing it in a review seems superfluous. The idea of it, moreover, so dominates people’s perceptions of ballet, mine included, that before Monday night’s performance I was worried that I would be lost for fresh words, silenced by the weight Tchaikovsky and Petipa’s swans have acquired in the 117 years since they first fluttered across the stage in St Petersburg. (Although the first treatment, and the music, date from 1877, it is really with the Petipa/Ivanov revival in 1895 that Swan Lake’s success story begins.)
Read full review... | |
| 15-Sep-2012 Sadler's Wells | San Francisco Ballet at Sadler's Wells: A second night just as good as the first |
 From the moment the curtain went up, there was no doubt that San Francisco Ballet had another evening of fabulous ballet in store for the audience at Sadler’s Wells, many of whom had been there the night before for Programme A.
Read full review... | |
| 14-Sep-2012 Sadler's Wells | San Francisco Ballet at Sadler's Wells: Programme A wows London |
 San Francisco Ballet, one of the oldest, biggest and most prestigious American companies, was last here eight years ago; their return – to judge by the buzzing crowd packing out Sadler’s Wells last night – has been eagerly awaited. Fortunately, they are not wasting a moment of their stay, treating the capital’s ballet fans to nine performances in as many days and showing ten works in total over three different mixed programmes.
Read full review... | |
| 30-Aug-2012 Edinburgh Festival Theatre | The Mariinsky bring a pitch-perfect Russian Cinderella to the Edinburgh International Festival |
 Prokofiev’s Cinderella is not the easiest ballet to love. In his Romeo and Juliet a timeless story and lush, action-driven score ensure that even mediocre productions are heartbreaking. In Cinderella on the other hand, the good characters have a fairytale flatness, the evil step-family are grotesque, and the score is frequently chromatic, and jarring, as well as being filled with long divertissements that do not advance the action.
Read full review... | |
| 17-Jul-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Titian 2012: A cultural olympiad of new works from the Royal Ballet |
 Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 invited artists from different disciplines, mainly the visual arts, dance and music, to respond to Titian's three magnifient paintings of the Diana and Actaeon myth. The results are displayed in an exhibition at the National Gallery (alongside Titian's originals), and in an triple bill of new ballets at the Royal Opera House.Read full review... | |
| 5-Jul-2012 Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich | Britain's Three National Dance Companies: New Material in Greenwich |
 Dance GB is a collaboration between the UK's three national dance companies, Scottish Ballet, National Dance Company Wales, and English National Ballet. A new piece was commissioned for each company, and they are being performed together in a triple bill that opened in Glasgow in June then toured to Cardiff, before finishing in London as part of Big Dance 2012, four days of dance in the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, on 5-8 July.Read full review... | |
| 3-Jul-2012 St Paul's Cathedral | Ballet in a Splendid Setting: English National Ballet at St Paul's Cathedral |
 To sit directly under the splendid chiaroscuro dome of St Paul's Cathedral, with angels, apostles and Christ himself glittering down from mosaiced arches, is to be in the middle of astonishing beauty. Adding music and dance to this visual feast could seem like overkill, but – as a canon of the cathedral reminded us in his welcome announcement – this space was designed for movement and music, and both are a constant feature of the Christian worship that has gone on here for centuries.
Read full review... | |
| 2-Jun-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | A historic revival of MacMillan's Prince of the Pagodas at Covent Garden |
 The Royal Ballet's revival of The Prince of the Pagodas is an extraordinary achievement in many ways, not least because the ballet has an undistinguished history.Read full review... | |
| 18-Apr-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | The Royal Ballet dazzles with a youthful triple bill at Covent Garden |
 The works in this triple bill were all created by choreographers in their twenties and two of them are new works made for the Royal Ballet this season, making for an evening of fresh, exuberant modern ballet. The Royal Opera House had given over the entire Amphitheatre to student tickets for this performance, so there was a youthful buzz in the audience to match the youthful buzz on stage.
Read full review... | |
| 16-Apr-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Covent Garden becomes a veritable Wonderland for Alice's Adventures |
 The Royal Ballet's 2011 reimagining of Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice stories was a glorious triumph, as proved by its immediate, slightly reworked revival for the 2012 season. Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon and composer Joby Talbot combine contemporary freshness with affectionate nods to the traditions of their respective crafts and together with playwright Nicholas Wright and the Royal Opera House's production team, they have created a gorgeously lush Alice, whose shimmering music, set wizardry and sheer exuberance will no doubt delight audiences for many seasons to come.
Read full review... | |
