Brigitte Lefèvre, Director of Ballet at the Paris Opera since 1995, will turn 68 later this year. The Paris Opera Ballet obliges ballerinas to leave at 42 with their pension; like it or not, ètoile or corps member, you’re out. Lefèvre carries on, even though she is past the retirement age for French national institutions. Maybe concerned that […]
Huffington Post
Critics Round-up: New York City Ballet’s Ocean’s Kingdom
The review headlines ran “That Sinking Feeling”, “Soggy Ocean Kingdom”, “All Wet” – you get the idea. But this was Sir Paul McCartney’s début in the world of ballet, the company was the great Yew York City Ballet, Sir Paul’s famous daughter, designer Stella, was doing costumes, and Peter Martins the choreography. So a lot of red carpet, […]
Why is Julie Taymor being attacked so viciously and relentlessly?
Harry Lennix, an actor who has frequently worked with Taymor for almost 20 years, tries to answer the question in The Huffington Post: In my opinion, the producers of Spider-Man have found a convenient whipping girl to bear the brunt of any woes related to the production. They seem to have absolved themselves from accountability […]
Elizabeth Taylor: selection from a life… what today’s press has been saying, her best films and her changing look
Today’s press A London-born beauty who never lost her clipped, clean way of speaking, Ms. Taylor possessed vivid features known to three generations of filmgoers: Raven hair, dark eyebrows, ivory skin, a near-perfect figure and, most remarkably, violet eyes that were among the most commented-on physical attributes in Hollywood history. Her great beauty arguably both […]
Rats! No ballet in 3-D ‘Nutcracker’
So closely associated are ETA Hoffmann’s 1816 story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” and everybody’s favorite 1892 Tchaikovsky ballet, it is downright shocking to find almost no dancing — except for an abstract motion-capture sequence — in Andrey Konchalovskiy’s 2010 “The Nutcracker in 3D.” There are no mice in the film either. Instead, there […]
