The latest issue of Dancing Times magazine (out on Friday) contains a double-page spread dedicated to the Gramilano ‘Danza in Italia' column reviews, with a look at Rudolph Nureyev's Sleeping Beauty at La Scala, The Tokyo Ballet on tour in Italy, and Daniele Cipriani Company's new production SHINE Pink Floyd Ballet at Verona's Teatro Romano.
Sleeping Beauty saw Polina Semionova guesting with the company, but other dancers shone more brightly: Nicola del Freo and Claudio Coviello both showed ‘supreme confidence' as the prince, and Nicoletta Manni ‘glowed' as Aurora.
Micha van Hoecke's new rock-ballet SHINE to Pink Floyd's music mixed ‘tours en l'air and air guitars' to great effect. Denys Ganio and ‘notable' Mattia Tortora play the older and younger Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's founder member who found his career falter through his drug misuse and mental illness.
The Tokyo Ballet performed George Balanchine's Serenade ‘exquisitely', and Maurice Béjart's Le Sacre du printemps was ‘exhilarating', with outstanding performances by Yuki Higuchi, Akimi Denda and Braulio Alvarez.
The new edition comes with Strictly Come Dancing updates, the habitual columns, and many, many special features, including my interview of the breakdancing countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński who is featured on this month's cover.
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Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
