The members of the video selections jury panel for the Prix de Lausanne 2019 have chosen 71 dancers to participate. Along with the nine pre-selected candidates, a total of 80 dancers will take part in the 47th edition of the international competition from 3-10 February 2019. The video selections concluded last weekend by the panel […]
Vaganova
Review: Three casts for La Bayadère with the Bolshoi at La Scala
How secretly gratifying it is when wine experts trip up, rating High Street plonk higher than the Premier cru. Ballet music could benefit from unlabelled listening. Minkus is routinely pooh-poohed, yet how many superb, theatrical moments he creates for La Bayadère — sublime, exhilarating, haunting, joyous. If interval chatter isn’t focussed on complaining about the […]
Pia Russo and the art of teaching ballet
Pia Russo is a highly respected Italian ballet teacher, currently working at the Ballet School of Teatro San Carlo in Naples, one of the world’s oldest ballet schools, founded in 1812 by Salvatore Taglioni, uncle of the celebrated Maria. She is known for her passion, dedication and meticulous preparation. After her dancing career ended, she […]
Bolshoi Ballet’s Italian dancer, Jacopo Tissi, on his first year in Moscow and dancing Diamonds at the Lincoln Center
Last August, young ballet dancer Jacopo Tissi, resigned from the La Scala Ballet to accept the offer a contract with the Bolshoi Company. As I wrote last September, it’s not something that happens every day. Like all Russian companies, the Bolshoi has few dancers from outside the ex-Soviet borders in its ranks. However, Makhar Vaziev, […]
Ballet dancer Sergei Vikharev died in his dentist’s chair
Sergei Vikharev, the former Russian dancer renowned for his reconstruction of ballets and who died last Friday at 55, will be celebrated in the foyer of the Mariinsky Theatre today, before being buried in St Petersburg’s Serafimovskoe Cemetery, which is also the resting place of many other Mariinsky dancers including Yuri Soloviev, Feya Balabina and […]
Vaganova Prix 2016… UPDATE
In July, Gramilano reported on the upcoming Vaganova Prix in St Petersburg. In view of the numerous requests from Russian and foreign ballet schools the age of the participants of the competition has been extended to include 19-year-olds and the new deadline for accepting applications has also been extended, now giving hopeful participants until 19 […]
Nikolay Tsiskaridze on the Vaganova Academy and Russian Ballet
In a recent interview with Our Russia‘s Olga Malik, Nikolay Tsiskaridze spoke once more about the Russian ballet and the Vaganova Academy’s relationship to dance in the rest of the world. I believe that the Russian ballet school is one of the few (if not the only) school that keeps the traditions of the classical ballet […]
How to stage a ballet… Maina Gielgud explains
The indefatigable Maina Gielgud is a freelance stager, guest teacher and coach. In 1983, two years after leaving her successful and varied career as a dancer, she became Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet, where she stayed for a remarkable fourteen years. It was the beginning of a long second career in company administration and […]
Russian Ministry says Vaganova letter against Tsiskaridze is forged
The Russian Ministry of Culture has said that the letter sent to Vladimir Putin by the staff of the Vaganova Academy, asking for the removal of Nikolai Tsiskaridze as its director, is a forgery. The letter said that the announced removal of the director Vera Dorofeyeva, and the artistic director, Altynai Asylmuratova, would cause “irreparable […]
The year ballet wept… jealousy & rivalry at the Bolshoi
So 29-year-old Bolshoi dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko will go to prison for six years, and his career obviously ends here. His biography has been taken down from the company’s website and soon his picture will disappear from the ‘leading soloists’ page. What a lot of damage he’s caused: to himself, the international reputation of the Bolshoi company and […]
