Category Archives: Ballet

Bangers and ballet: London’s Ministry of Sound embraces contemporary dance

Posted on by

Big-name ballet dancers and rising choreographers have found a new home in the superclub where the after-party goes on until 5am

“It’s the easiest rider we’ve ever done,” says the Ministry of Sound’s Mahit Anam. “Normally it’s five bottles of Patrón, four bottles of vodka … ” And this time? Water, bananas and protein bars. It’s not your usual green room at the south London superclub, because this is not your usual show: the dancefloor is about to be taken over by professionals. Ballet Nights – a monthly production usually held in a Canary Wharf theatre and featuring the country’s top ballet stars and rising choreographers – is moving into clubland. So now amid the speaker stacks and DJ decks you’ll see Royal Ballet dancer Joshua Junker and work from Olivier award-winning choreographer James Cousins. It’s a whole different kind of podium dancing.

“Everything’s got too formulaic, too samey, and that’s why we want to do this stuff,” says Anam. “Pushing boundaries is something we should always be doing.” Ballet Nights was hatched by former Scottish Ballet soloist and choreographer Jamiel Devernay-Laurence in 2023. The idea was to give audiences an up-close view of big-name ballet dancers like Steven McRae and Matthew Ball as well as nurturing a stable of young artists. But he was itching to expand, and eager to attract younger audiences, people who are the same age as the dancers who perform. Devernay-Laurence had met with all sorts of venues – theatres, concert halls – and it was always a “let’s talk again in the future” situation. But when he walked into Ministry of Sound: “They had open arms, they were so excited. We walked out the same day with an agreement and a date.”

Ballet Nights is at Ministry of Sound, London, on 31 May

Continue reading...

Australian Ballet dancers to take first industrial action in more than four decades

Posted on by

Dancers will ‘hold the curtain’ at a Melbourne performance on Friday after negotiations to ensure appropriate pay rises failed

Dancers of the Australian Ballet will take industrial action for the first time in more than four decades, after negotiations with management over a new workplace agreement reached an impasse on Monday.

Dancers will “hold the curtain” at this Friday’s performance in Melbourne, meaning the show Identity, a program of two original works, will be delayed by 15 minutes.

Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

Continue reading...

German ballet director offers no apology over dog faeces incident

Posted on by

Marco Goecke says he acted in heat of the moment after years of ‘annihilatory' criticism’

An award-winning German ballet company director who smeared his dog’s faeces on the face of a dance critic has failed to apologise, saying he was responding to decades of “annihilatory criticism”.

Marco Goecke admitted in an interview with the broadcaster NDR that his “means of attack” was “certainly not super” but said he had acted on impulse on seeing the journalist, Wiebke Hüster.

Continue reading...

German ballet director ‘smeared dog faeces on critic’s face’ after bad review

Posted on by

Marco Goecke allegedly confronted Wiebke Hüster at Hanover State Opera, furious at her verdict on a previous show

The director of a leading German ballet company has been suspended from his post and is being investigated by police after allegedly smearing a critic’s face with his dog’s excrement at the premiere of his new show after she described one of his productions as “boring” and “disjointed”.

Marco Goecke, the head of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, has also been barred from the opera house, a spokesperson confirmed on Monday afternoon, after he confronted Wiebke Hüster, the ballet critic of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), in the interval of his latest show on Sunday night.

Continue reading...

Adelaide festival to stage Verdi’s Requiem with a cast of hundreds – and a star choreographer

Posted on by

After Covid thwarted two attempts to bring out Christian Spuck’s acclaimed Messa da Requiem, the festival has finally announced it as next year’s centrepiece

For Adelaide festival’s 2023 opera centrepiece a cast of almost 200 singers, dancers and musicians will take the stage under the direction of one of the world’s most celebrated choreographers.

Dance will be foregrounded in Messa da Requiem: the celebrated production of Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece Requiem by the German choreographer Christian Spuck, which debuted in Zurich in 2016.

Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

Continue reading...

Charity that supported St Petersburg ballet and opera closes its doors

Posted on by

Prince Charles was a patron of trust set up by friend of Putin to back the Russian Mariinsky theatre

A UK charity set up to support one of Russia’s oldest theatres has closed. The Anglo-Russian Opera and Ballet Trust, founded in 1992, raised millions for Russian arts organisations and boasted the Prince of Wales as its patron.

The charity was set up by conductor Valery Gergiev, a high-profile friend of Vladimir Putin, with the main goal of supporting St Petersburg’s Mariinsky theatre – one of the best-known cultural institutions in Russia – and promoting its work in the UK.

Continue reading...

‘Impossible’: Bolshoi music director quits over calls to denounce Ukraine invasion

Posted on by

Tugan Sokhiev resigns without stating his position, saying he could not choose between ‘my beloved Russian and beloved French musicians’

The Bolshoi Theatre’s music director and principal conductor Tugan Sokhiev announced his resignation Sunday, saying he felt under pressure due to calls to take a position on the Ukraine conflict.

The Russian said in a statement he was resigning “with immediate effect” from his post at the Moscow theatre, as well as his equivalent position at France’s Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse.

Continue reading...

The show can’t go on: Russian arts cancelled worldwide

Posted on by

Concerts, dance recitals and exhibitions have been postponed indefinitely after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has prompted responses from the cultural sphere, with Russian artists and companies beginning to feel the repercussions of decisions taken by the Kremlin. Not only has Russia been stripped of two prestigious events – the Champions League men’s final and Formula One’s Russian Grand Prix –but an increasing number of performances by Russians are being cancelled worldwide.

Continue reading...

Marianela Núñez: ‘What lockdown taught me, one more time, is that dance is my true passion’

Posted on by

The Royal Ballet’s phenomenal principal dancer was the fixed star at the heart of an extraordinary year for the company

It’s been an oddly fractured year for dance. Repeated lockdowns stifled talent, thwarted new ideas. Online and outdoor offerings provided some release but when theatres reopened in May, dancers emerged as if from hibernation, full of life, anxious to get on with their notoriously short careers.

None more so than Marianela Núñez. The Royal Ballet has excelled as a company this year, but she is the fixed star gleaming at its heart, never disappointing, always moving towards her aim of perfection. Her smile irradiates the stage, but it is the purity of her classical technique, the sense that you are watching someone at the absolute peak of their abilities.

Continue reading...

Bolshoi performer dies in accident on stage during opera

Posted on by

Man, 37, said to be killed by falling decor in set change during Rimsky-Korsakov opera

A performer at Moscow’s renowned Bolshoi theatre was killed on Saturday in an accident on stage during an opera, the theatre said.

The Bolshoi, one of Russia’s most prestigious theatres, said the incident occurred during a set change in Sadko, an opera by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Continue reading...

Ballerina Georgina Pazcoguin: ‘We owe it to younger dancers not to stay silent’

Posted on by

In her new memoir, New York City Ballet’s first Asian-American soloist speaks out about racism and sexual bullying in ballet. Now she wants to overhaul the industry from within

When Georgina Pazcoguin was 19 years old, she went to see a doctor about her thighs. A dancer at the New York City Ballet, Pazcoguin had previously had what was known among dancers as “the fat talk” with the company’s then leader, Peter Martins. During their meeting Martins had told her she didn’t “fit in”, silently indicating the area between her backside and her knees. And so, following a recommendation from a friend, she visited the office of one Dr Wilcox, who told her she should consume no more than 720 calories a day – the recommended number for the average woman is closer to 2,000 – and gave her some sealed packets of powder. For the next four months, she subsisted on the powder, plus a single chicken breast and two pounds of spinach or lettuce, which would make up her evening meal.

“No one wants to be told their body is insufficient,” says Pazcoguin, now 36. “I mean, line is essential in my business; there is a certain aesthetic [that is expected]. But I am not an ectomorph. As a dancer you are staring at your body all day long in a mirror. But to try to intimidate me to make me look like this stick figure? Some women are just born a particular way. And there [should be] flexibility within the ballet world for more body types than just this waif-thin idea.”

Continue reading...

Julie Felix: the brilliant Black ballerina who was forced to leave Britain

Posted on by

She was told there was no room for a ‘brown swan’ in the London Festival Ballet, so she went to the US. There she found enormous success, dancing for everyone from Michael Jackson to Prince

The turning point in Julie Felix’s career came in 1975. A student at Rambert ballet school in London, she was selected to dance in Rudolf Nureyev’s production of Sleeping Beauty with the London Festival Ballet (now the English National Ballet). Nureyev was the god of British ballet – and he lived up to his reputation on the first day of rehearsal, Felix recalls. “He was late, but everybody said he was always late. All of a sudden, the doors flew open and in he came. He was well renowned for these big boots he used to wear, and a big fur coat. He took the coat off like a matador and threw it so it slid across the dance studio floor. Everybody jumped up and stood to attention. He was there for probably about half an hour.” At the time, 17-year-old Felix was awestruck. In hindsight, half a century later, she is less impressed: “Talk about unprofessional.”

In the fairytale version of Felix’s life, having acquitted herself on stage with Nureyev, she would have joined the London Festival Ballet and become the first Black British dancer to begin her ascent through the ranks of a British ballet company. Instead, she was told she was a “lovely dancer”, but was not going to be given a contract, “because of the colour of my skin. I would mess up the line of the corps de ballet, because you can’t have a whole row of white swans and then there’s a brown one at the end.”

Continue reading...

Patter of tiny feet: dancers on leaping into motherhood

Posted on by

Juggling babies and a job is always difficult – what are the particular pressures for performers and how is the industry taking steps to improve?

Followers of Royal Ballet principal Lauren Cuthbertson cheer ardently for her Juliet, Manon and Sugar Plum Fairy, but are in raptures about her latest role, as mum to baby Peggy, born in December and already the toast of Instagram. Cuthbertson is one of a flurry of dancers at the Royal who are about to give or have recently given birth, in a serendipitously timed lockdown baby boom.

It’s a long way from the early days of the company, when founder Ninette de Valois set the tone. “‘You’re pregnant darling, goodbye!’ That’s how it was,” says Jeanetta Laurence, a dancer in its touring company in the 1960s and 70s. Even now, she says: “It’s hard to think of another industry where having a baby is so intrusive to the work. I’m in awe and wonder at how they manage it.”

Continue reading...

Berlin: Staatsballett’s first black female dancer accuses it of racism

Posted on by

Chloé Lopes Gomes claims she was repeatedly told she did not fit in because of her skin colour

The first black female dancer at Berlin’s principal ballet company has accused the institution of racial harassment, claiming she was repeatedly told she did not fit in because of her skin colour.

Chloé Lopes Gomes, a French citizen, who joined the Staatsballett as a corps de ballet member in 2018, said she had faced recurrent racial abuse from her ballet mistress. In an interview with the Guardian she also accuses the company of institutional racism after managers failed to act even after various incidents were brought to their attention.

Continue reading...

Discovery of Margot Fonteyn film footage excites ballet lovers

Posted on by

Record of ballerina with young dancers in 1972 found in Royal Academy of Dance archives

She was one of the greatest ballerinas who ever graced the stage, revered for her musicality, artistry and technical perfection. Now previously unseen footage of Dame Margot Fonteyn instilling the joy of dance in young children has been discovered, to the excitement of historians and ballet enthusiasts.

Footage of Fonteyn with young girls taking their first steps in ballet was found in the archives of the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) and will receive its first public screening at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London from Wednesday.

Continue reading...

Viral video of ballerina with Alzheimer’s shows vital role of music in memory

Posted on by

Music’s primal power for those living with dementia has inspired thousands of YouTube views for a clip of a former dancer

We see a frail and elderly woman in a chair, her eyes downcast. She motions for the music to be turned up, a swelling melody from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and with a little encouragement her hands begin to flutter. Then suddenly her eyes flash and she’s Odette the swan queen at the misty lakeside, arms raised. She leans forward, wrists crossed in classic swan pose; her chin lifts as if she’s commanding the stage once more, her face lost in reverie.

The woman in the film is Marta Cinta González Saldaña, a former ballet dancer who died in 2019, the year the video was shot. But the clip has gone viral since being posted recently by Spanish organisation Música Para Despertar (Music to Awaken), which promotes the value of music for those living with Alzheimer’s. Many of the details accompanying the video on its journey around the internet have been erroneous. Marta Cinta was not a member of the “New York Ballet” (there’s no such company) or the actual New York City Ballet, but seems to have run her own dance company in the city; the ballerina performing in the intercut video is not her but Ulyana Lopatkina, who is not even dancing Swan Lake but Mikhail Fokine’s The Dying Swan. Yet none of that takes away the impact of watching someone seemingly light up and have their memories unlocked by the power of melody. It’s as if you’re seeing Saldaña inhabit her true self.

Continue reading...

Rickshaw driver’s son beats odds to join famed UK ballet school

Posted on by

After just four years’ training in India and some fast crowd-funding, Kamal Singh joins English National Ballet School

Kamal Singh did not even know what ballet was when he turned up nervously at the Imperial Fernando Ballet School, in Delhi, during the summer of 2016. But the 17-year-old, known as Noddy, whose father was a rickshaw driver in the west of the city, had been transfixed by ballet dancers in a Bollywood film, and wanted to try it for himself.

Four years on Singh is now one of the first Indian students to be admitted to the English National Ballet school. He started this week.

Continue reading...

Carlos Acosta: ‘My mother roasted my pet rabbits. I was sad, but I ate them’

Posted on by

The Cuban dancer talks about food rationing, what he ate at ballet school and his father’s terrible cooking

I always lived with rationing in Cuba – I was born in 1973. We used the term “the three musketeers” to mean rice, chicharos [split peas] and eggs, although at one point eggs disappeared completely.

I had two rabbits as pets and I arrived home from school one day and there was that smell I’d almost forgotten, of meat. Then I realised that Mamá had roasted my pets and I cried a lot. My mother pressed us to eat them and we all did. The rabbits tasted very good, obviously – I was a kid and I sort of got distracted. I was very sad, but I ate.

Continue reading...