The Intendant at Rome Opera, Carlo Fuortes, and the director of the opera house’s ballet company, Eleonora Abbagnato, together with theatre employees, today inaugurated the Sala Elisabetta Terabust, the main ballet rehearsal room, formerly known as Sala Ballo A. Virginia Raggi, Rome’s mayor, said, Elisabetta Terabust, a woman with a strong personality, was appreciated throughout […]
Peter Schaufuss
Italian ballerina Elisabetta Terabust has died in Rome at 71
The magnificent Italian ballerina Elisabetta Terabust died in Rome this morning, 5 February, at her home near the Campo de’ Fiori, after a long illness. She was just 71. She became a Principal Dancer at the Rome Opera ballet in 1966 and an Etoile in 1972. She worked extensively with the Royal Festival Ballet (now […]
Polunin, Zelensky and Schaufuss settle out of court
The Dancing Times reports that Sergei Polunin and Igor Zelensky have settled out of court after walking out of Peter Schaufuss’ production of Midnight Express at the London Coliseum at the last minute. Schaufuss’ company was suing them both for £400,000 to compensate for lost ticket sales. The producers said at the time that £14,000 had to be […]
Vasiliev is still a jeune homme… careful Ivan!
Ivan Vasiliev is a powerful performer, both physically and emotionally. His prowess in ballet pyrotechnics – the leaps, the turns – has brought him fame throughout the world. But he’s no circus performer as his Quasimodo in Roland Petit’s Notre Dame de Paris in Milan or his Romeo in Frederick Ashton’s production of Romeo and Juliet in London demonstrated; […]
Sergei Polunin and Igor Zelensky are sued for £400,000 by Peter Schaufuss Ballet
23-year-old Sergei Polunin is being sued for failing to show for Peter Schaufuss’ production of Midnight Express in April. The box office was forced to give refunds, bookings slumped because the star name had dropped out, and publicity material had to be reprinted. According to the Daily Mail, although Polunin and his mentor Igor Zelensky, who also withdrew, […]
The Houdini of dance: Sergei Polunin disappears again
Certainly quicker than it takes to escape from a Turkish prison, ballet’s bad boy Sergei Polunin has disappeared from Peter Schaufuss’ production of Midnight Express. The show is due to open on Tuesday in London but according the the London Evening Standard he has not shown up for rehearsals, is not answering his phone, and […]
Critics round-up: Peter Schaufuss’ Tchaikovsky Trilogy
This promises to be the most fun critics round-up yet. Rarely have reviews been so unanimously foul. Being that there was so little to save, the critics left their stars in the drawer, and polished their metaphors with seeming glee. No amount of special pleading, of aesthetic jiggery-pokery, can excuse Schaufuss’s weird libretto as it […]
Carla Fracci with Schaufuss, Vasiliev, Cragun, Jude and others on YouTube
In 1987 a two-part television programme called The Ballerinas featured Carla Fracci, with some of the top male dancers of the period, in a series of reconstructions putting various ballets and their interpretors in an historical context. Fracci was an amazingly youthful 51 when she danced these extracts. Dance Magazine critic John Gruen wrote: […]
Sneak peek: Peter Schaufuss working with Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev for London’s next R&J
Peter Schaufuss is rehearsing his company’s Romeo & Juliet for London. It marks the 40th anniversary of Schaufuss’s first appearance with London Festival Ballet, now English National Ballet. More than a decade later, in 1984, he took over as the company’s artistic director. He has been running the Peter Schaufuss Ballet for the last 15 years, which […]