The Ravenna Festival was founded in 1990 by Cristina Mazzavillani Muti, with a rich programme which includes symphonic and chamber music, opera, drama, dance, ballet, musical theatre, jazz, and ethnic music. It’s the perfect location for a summer festival as Ravenna is a stunningly beautiful city, with eight UNESCO World Heritage sites including its stunning…
There are many, many Italian dancers scattered around companies throughout the world. Some are in the corps de ballet, others are principal dancers, but all continue the tradition that made Italian dancers some of the most famous of all. Even leaving the men aside, we have Pierina Legnani (noted as ‘maybe’ being the first to…
Dancing Times‘ May issue is out now, with a glorious cover featuring Margot Fonteyn – the only dancer to be given the title prima ballerina assoluta by The Royal Ballet – who was born 100 years ago on 18 May. The magazine celebrates the centenary of Fonteyn’s birth with articles by The Royal Ballet’s director…
Les Étoiles in Rome – Marianela Nuñez, Vadim Muntagirov, Olesya Novikova, Leonid Sarafanov, Maria Alexandrova, Vladislav Lantratov, Polina Semionova, Dmitry Semionov, Tatiana Melnik, Bakhtiyar Adamzhan, Nicoletta Manni, Sergio Bernal A gala is a gala is a gala… too many bonbons leaving a slightly woozy sensation as the audience rises to its feet at the end….
As an antipasto to the annual Les Étoiles gala in Rome — this year a sold out two days, next year there will be three — in the luxurious setting of the Hotel de Russie near the Spanish Steps, there was an intimate reception hosted by the hotel, with a Sergei Diaghilev theme. The event…
It’s become an annual event in Rome – after the Christmas holidays and the last bite of panettone, comes the Daniele Cipriani Entertainment dance gala with some of the best and biggest names in ballet today. This year, in Renzo Piano’s beautiful Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, the dates to jot in your dairy…
2018 marks 80 years since Rudolf Nureyev was born and 25 since he died. La Scala in Milan have marked the occasion with a series of Gala celebrations and performances of his Don Quixote, Manuel Legris organised a celebration with the Vienna State Ballet, and many more tributes have been staged to doff a hat…
The ceremony for the first edition of the Oscar della Danza has been held at Cinecittà World in Rome. In Italy, there are the David di Donatello awards for cinema, the Italian Musical Awards, the Franco Abbiati awards for opera, Premio Le Maschere for theatre, and many for literature, but the various dance awards —…
Salsa, merengue and mambo… that’s how I started dancing. So says Davide Dato, Principal Dancer at the Vienna State Ballet. Many classical dancers began in their living room imitating Michael Jackson‘s moonwalk, but the Caribbean dances for Dato were not just a phase. I started when I was very young, with my sister Greta. Our…
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….
There is a rare opportunity to see Amedeo Amodio and Emanuele Luzzati’s glorious Nutcracker which has been dusted down and is ready to conqueror Italian ballet-goers once again. The famous production is from 1989, when Elisabetta Terabust and Vladimir Derevianko created the roles of Clara and Prince. At the Arcimboldi Theatre in Milan on 2 and…
One of the most charming and winning productions of The Nutcracker seen in Italy during the last fifty years, was created for the relatively small company AterBalletto. The company is now known as a contemporary group (it was transformed as such by former Artistic Director Mauro Bigonzetti, whose works dominated its programming from 1997); however,…
Italians, and visitors to il bel paese, have a rare opportunity to see Twyla Tharp Dance between 21 and 26 June when the company visits Florence, Ravenna and Rome. For the Italian tour the company brings an exciting preview of a new work together with two classic works from the vast Tharp repertory; during Tharp’s…
At the end of The Nutcracker at Rome’s Teatro Nazionale on 20 December last year, 25-year-old Rebecca Bianchi was promoted to Principal Dancer of the Rome Opera Ballet by the theatre’s General Manager, Carlo Fuortes, and the head of the ballet company, Eleonora Abbagnato. It was something I wasn’t expecting and it was very emotional……
Repeating the success of last year’s ballet gala, Daniele Cipriani once again presents a Les Étoiles evening in Rome. Tonight and tomorrow night – 23 and 24 January – there is the opportunity to catch some of the world’s brightest stars at the Auditorium Conciliazione, just around the corner from the Vatican. The Royal Ballet’s…
This is an exciting time for The Royal Ballet, which has been on a roll for several years with an enthusiastic public for the sold-out performances at the Royal Opera House, the extremely popular live cinema relays, and the streamed events on the internet.
For two nights from tomorrow in Rome there is the possibility to attend a most unusual dance gala. While there are only four taking part, their ages combined total 266 years. The dancers are Mats Ek, Ana Laguna, Susanne Linke and Dominique Mercy, Laguna being the youngest of the quartet at just sixty. Playing on…
The annual Benois de la danse prize-giving ceremony, one of the dance world’s most prestigious awards, was held at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow at the end of May. The prix is awarded not only to dancers and choreographers but also to composers and designers, reflecting Diaghilev’s noble concept that ballet is a fusion of all…
New York City Ballet Principal Dancers Ashley Bouder, Joaquin De Luz, Amar Ramasar and Andrew Veyette are joined by company dancers Emilie Gerrity, Joseph Gordon, Spartak Hoxha, Alexa Maxwell and Indiana Woodward for a Gala performance in Rome. On 8 March in the Santa Cecilia Hall in Rome’s modern arts complex, the Auditorium Parco della…
A good old-fashioned ballet gala: Nutcracker, Don Q, Swan Lake, Le Corsaire… it’s sometimes just what the doctor ordered. Daniele Cipriani‘s Les Étoiles injected the audience in Rome with a generous dose of positive energy administered by some of the world’s best dancers. It wasn’t all cherries. Silvia Azzoni and Oleksandr Ryabko danced Hamburg Ballet…
Christmas, New Year and then the Epiphany – the day of the Befana, a sort of female Santa Claus who delivers presents to Italian children for the Twelfth day of Christmas – and Daniele Cipriani Entertainment now adds another date to this feast of abundance with a dance gala full of plums! The 10th and 11th…
Last night the threatening weather held off, and the gala and award ceremony for the Positano Premia la Danza Léonide Massine on the main beach at Positano went ahead as planned. The exquisite setting on the Amalfi Coast is what attracted artists such as Nureyev, and Massine himself, who made the area their holiday home, and when…
The attraction that Positano and its seascape have always exercised over artists of the dance is the reason that, on 2 August 1969, the Premio Positano was established. Ten years later, on the death of Léonide Massine, the Award was named after him. Now into its 42nd edition, the 2014 Awards will be presented on Saturday 6…
Carmen, Medea and Cassandra… just imagine all three around your dinner table… a diplomatic nightmare. For Italian choreographer Luciano Cannito they have provided him with inspiration for a new pièce: part dance, part poetry. Called ‘Il processo’ – The Trial – it gives these three women a chance to tell their side of their story, stories which are…
“It’s very difficult to tour now in Italy with its money problems,” Carolyn Carlson tells me, which makes producer Daniele Cipriani a brave man indeed: he is bringing her new piece Dialogue with Rothko to Rome, with workshops to follow. Why Mark Rothko? It started as a commission to do a short haiku or prose on a painter…
For more than twenty years the Benois Prize has been recognising talent with the most starry juries imaginable. The first year it consisted of Yury Grigorovich as its president, with Galina Ulanova (Russia), Carla Fracci (Italy), Kirsten Ralov (Denmark), Yvette Chauviré (France), Rudolf Nureyev (world citizen?) and John Neumeier (Germany). This year one of these, La Fracci, returned as part of an…
Tourists on Rome’s Spanish Steps were taken by surprise yesterday afternoon when a company of dancers descended on them dressed as characters from Federico Fellini‘s Amarcord. Italian ballet dancer and all-round entertainer Rossella Brescia, with the entire company of dancers from Danzitalia in their 1930s garb, along with choreographer Luciano Cannito and designer Roberta Guidi…
The title may make serious fans of ballet balk: Gran Gala Il Cigno Nero – Black Swan Gala. If Daniele Cipriani, the producer, wants to cash in on some of the publicity from the Darren Aronofsky film of the same name, the content of the gala has nothing to do with the superficiality of the…
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