Now in its eighth year, English National Ballet‘s Emerging Dancer competition will this year be held at Sadler’s Wells, for the first time, on Thursday 25 May 2017. Through this annual event, English National Ballet recognises the excellence of its own artists. Selected by their peers, six of the company’s most promising dancers perform in…
The American Cancer Society – Our Mission is to Save Lives, Celebrate Lives and Lead the Fight for a World Without Cancer! – is staging its 7th Annual Dance Against Cancer. Erin Fogarty Bittner, who is the Programming Director at Manhattan Youth Ballet, and Daniel Ulbricht, Principal Dancer at New York City Ballet, who have…
Former Royal Ballet Principal Sergei Polunin will partner Natalia Osipova in June, when he returns to dance in Frederick Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand. Other casting sees another former Royal Ballet Principal, Alessandra Ferri, together with her fellow Italian Federico Bonelli, and the third Italian in the lineup is Roberto Bolle who will be partnering Zenaida…
The previously announced ballet to be performed at California’s Segerstrom Center by La Scala‘s Ballet Company was Mauro Bigonzetti’s Cinderella, a ballet created for the opening of La Scala’s ballet season in 2015. Bigonzetti had a short-lived tenure at the helm of the La Scala company: less than ten months, in 2016. His departure because of…
Rossini Opera Festival The Rossini Opera Festival and the Teatro Comunale di Bologna have announced their separation after 30 years. Starting with a Petite Messe Solennelle in 1987, Bologna has provided the orchestra and chorus for the main productions each year, resulting in almost 50 video and audio recordings of some of the most important…
Anna Netrebko has returned to La Scala to sing Violetta as she sings ‘addio’ to the role. She will sing in a Traviata once more in Paris next February, and then that’s it for the curvy Russian and the consumptive courtesan. The idea of tackling this role at La Scala was my idea, so I…
English National Ballet’s new season contains new exciting projects from Tamara Rojo, who keeps her magic wand carefully hidden or has a genius sense of what will stimulate and satisfy not just ENB’s existing audience, but the new audiences which it seems to be successfully attracting. Kenneth MacMillan‘s Song of the Earth and Frank Andersen’s La…
Italy has just lost another ballet company, that of Verona, which had been whittled down to twenty members over the last few years. A couple of decades ago, when Carla Fracci headed the company, it presented the classical repertory. Now a similar fate is looming over the heads of the dancers of the excellent Bordeaux National…
La traviata returns to La Scala in Liliana Cavani’s beautiful 1990 production with sets by three-time Oscar winner Dante Ferretti, and the sumptuous costumes of Gabriella Pescucci. As always, the run is sold out. However, the artists involved have agreed with the theatre in giving the proceeds for a special preview performance to help those…
Zubin Mehta will be conducting La Scala‘s orchestra for a Stravinsky double-bill with the theatre’s ballet company: Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Michel Fokine‘s choreography and Alexandre Benois’ costumes and sets were created for the original production in 1911 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. This original version was last seen at La…
On this day, 10 February 1927, Leontyne Price was born in Laurel, Mississipi. To celebrate her 90th birthday, La Scala joins companies, colleagues and fans the world over in wishing her a happy birthday, and has released some photos of the great soprano from its archive. Price first sang at the renowned Milanese theatre on…
BALLET2000’s Special New Year Issue, is on the newsstands now. It looks back on a year in dance with, says editor Alfio Agostini, …the best shows, trendiest dancers, most significant companies and most creative choreographers. The bi-monthly dance magazine, uniquely, comes out in three separate editions: Édition FRANCE, ENGLISH Edition and Edizione ITALIA. Each year it produces…
A large audience attended the Prix de Lausanne finals both at Théâtre de Beaulieu and online. Eight young dancers have been awarded a scholarship allowing them to enter one of the 68 partner schools and companies of the competition. Promising dancers from all over the world competed to arrive in the final 20, and the names were announced…
The great Bolshoi ballerina, Maria Alexandrova, has suddenly, and surprisingly, announced via Instagram, that she is leaving the company she has always danced with: My dear beloved colleagues and spectators I want to say heartfelt THANK YOU to all of you for this amazing story we shared together in Bolshoi. But this great part of…
After four days of intensive classes, 20 candidates have qualified for the finals of the Prix de Lausanne competition. 66 candidates from all over the world have attended daily classes, coaching, and rehearsals with some of the top names in ballet. Their potential was not only assessed by considering their technical ability, but also their…
American Ballet Theatre‘s new production of Whipped Cream, choreographed by ABT Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmansky, will receive its world premiere at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts from 15 – 19 March. It will subsequently be performed in New York at the Met between 22 May and 1 July. The performance on the opening…
English National Ballet‘s exciting Bausch / Forsythe / van Manen programme arrives at Sadler’s Wells in March. Pina Bausch‘s masterpiece The Rite of Spring must be the highlight of the evening, though Hans van Manen‘s Adagio Hammerklavier and William Forsythe‘s In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated certainly won’t disappoint. With the performances of The Rite of Spring, ENB will become the second ballet company…
English National Ballet‘s Emerging Dancer competition is already in it’s eighth edition. This year it will be held at Sadler’s Wells on Thursday 25 May. Unusually, the English National Ballet chooses, through this annual competition, to recognises the excellence of its artists, who are selected by their peers. Six of the company’s most promising dancers…
On Friday and Saturday evening, at La Scala, Riccardo Muti made his return to the theatre he dominated for 19 seasons, after having been away for 12 years. He wasn’t conducting the La Scala Philharmonic but his own Chicago Symphony Orchestra; he has been its Artistic Director since 2010. Muti strode to the podium with cries…
I’ll lay my cards on the table: I thought that Misty Copeland was an over-hyped media phenomenon, with a personal story that had leapfrogged ahead of her actual ability. This opinion was totally based on prejudice – having never seen her dance – and by knowing how many ‘artists’ become popular with a vast public…
Monica Vaglietti is a corps de ballet dancer at La Scala in Milan. She is also an animal lover. Greyhounds especially. Nothing exceptional so far, but there is something that makes Monica unusual. So, Monica, just how many Greyhounds do you have? Thirteen! Though, to be precise, one is actually an Ibizan Hound, Filippo. That…
The roles of Romeo and Juliet are unexpectedly hard to bring off in ballet. In the play, the timbre of the voice and meaning of the text explain what the two are thinking and feeling, whereas, using just body movements, it is difficult to hit the right tone, and during Kenneth MacMillan‘s masterpiece at La…
Julian MacKay at 16 was winning medals at the Sochi and Istanbul competitions when he represented his school, the Bolshoi Academy. At 17 he won the Prix de Lausanne and his Harlequin Floors Scholarship let him spend a year with The Royal Ballet. At 18 he was snapped up as soloist with the Mikhailovsky Ballet…
Jonas Kaufmann has not sung since September when he sang the programme from his glorious new cd, Dolce Vita, at Teatro San Carlo in Naples. He was forced to cancel his imminent appearances due to voice problems… then a few more dates… then a few more, even cancelling his appearance at the Nobel Prize Award…
William Forsythe‘s In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated was created for the Paris Opera Ballet who have performed it at home and abroad since 1987. The piece entered the repertoire of Dresden’s Semperoper Ballett in 2006 and now they are about to invade the Palais Garnier and perform it on the stage it was created for;…
I have been visiting Italy for the last 25 years and it has been my home for most of that time. For a quarter of a century I have been hearing about a production of the Nutcracker which was very popular during the ‘80s and ‘90s when the company Aterballetto took the ballet on tour….
It’s not often that the accompanist for a recital is mentioned in the opening paragraph of a review, but Anita Rachvelishvili‘s recital at La Scala with pianist David Aladashvili was a true joint effort, not just musically, but from how they shared the stage. They obviously know each other very well and although Aladashvili, a…
“Bringing Cairo’s dance and photography communities together…” is how the Ballerinas of Cairo defines its Instagram account. The BBC, however, thinks it’s more than that: The Ballerinas of Cairo are refusing to be intimidated by the recent terrorist attacks that shook the Egyptian capital. Instead, they’re taking to the streets. saying that its aim is…
At the Czech National Ballet in Prague, 2017 will see the handing over of the role of Artistic Director from Petr Zuska to Filip Barankiewicz after fifteen years of Zuska heading the company. Zuska, who was interviewed by Gramilano last year, has four premieres in his final season for the company. The Little Mermaid, which opened…
The Sleeping Beauty reopened the Royal Opera House after the war in February 1946 when the Company first took up residence in Covent Garden with Margot Fonteyn dancing the role of Princess Aurora. Now, 70 years later, The Royal Ballet will be performing their signature piece from Wednesday 21 December 2016 until Tuesday 14 March 2017. The 70th anniversary…
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