[Photo Album] Dasa Wharton sees Don Quixote with The Royal Ballet – Nuñez, Muntagirov, Naghdi, Ball

Don Quixote with Marianela Nuñez, Vadim Muntagirov, Mayara Magri

In staging his version for The Royal Ballet, Carlos Acosta, who was once a high-jumping and charming Basilio, has taken the wise decision to increase the comedy and concentrate on the dancing. – THE GUARDIAN

At the heart of Saturday's performance gleamed Nuñez and Muntagirov. Muntagirov, a sighworthy classical technician, has turned up the volume on his interpretation and nailed every laugh. Nuñez, always at her very best in ballet's romantic comedies, used her dazzling facility to create a fully rounded picture of this sunny, loveable heroine, enveloping her audience in a conspiracy of pleasure. Every bravura set piece was delicately offset with pouts, shrugs and sidelong smiles, ensuring that those killer variations — freeze-frame balances, triple fouettés — were always a performance, never a mere display. – FINANCIAL TIMES

Carlos Acosta's dazzling production stands out for its lack of filler moments, there are no slow crowd scenes to set up the story, instead there is flat out dancing less than ten minutes in and it barely relents from there; gypsy dances, fandango couples, duelling butchers and a mechanical horse, they're all here. – BACHTRACK

Marianela Núñez and Vadim Muntagirov have a well-established partnership, their chemistry always thrilling. As Kitri and Basilio, they tell a totally engaging story of great complicity and mutual teasing with some laugh-out-loud moments, but also of heart-warming love. Throughout their pas de deux, culminating in the wedding scene are breathtaking, Muntagirov (pictured top) blending sublime elegance with feats of rousing virtuosity, Núñez's technical assurance entirely effortless. – CULTURE WHISPER

Don Quixote with Yasmine Naghdi, Matthew Ball, Nicol Edmonds

Gramilano( Editor )

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.