English national ballet

I was watching the Cirque du Soleil’s Kooza at the Royal Albert Hall last week, thinking how much base, uncomplicated enjoyment can be had away from dance. Such relief to watch contortionists, trapezists, high-wire cyclists and crazed men skipping on the Wheel of Death, such relief just to be amazed. If they didn’t make my palms pour sweat with fear, my jaw drop with disbelief, I’d feel dreadfully let down. I wonder what happened to being amazed in dance. I was talking with a friend last week about the lack of amazement offered by the bulk of ballerinas in current productions of the 19th-century warhorses Don Quixote (Royal Ballet) and Swan

There’s been heated disagreement over the past week about what’s right and wrong. Is the rocket-propelled ex-Bolshoi enfant terrible Ivan Vasiliev ‘right’ for Swan Lake? Is English National Ballet right to accept such huge thighs in this of all classics, when the sizeist cohorts of the Russian establishment always said nyet to the sturdy, forceful Belarussian? That peculiar balletic categorisation ‘emploi’ has been invoked even by British critics. Emploi means ‘rightness’ as a ‘type’ for a role. Emploi was what drove Mikhail Baryshnikov, another short man condemned at home by his build to demi-caractère parts, to quit Russia and its narrowmindedness and redefine himself as danseur noble in the West.

The Nutcracker, English National Ballet, until 4 Jan *** The Little Match Girl, Lilian Baylis Studio, until 4 Jan ***** Edward Scissorhands, Sadler’s Wells, until 11 Jan *** Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Royal Ballet, until 16 Jan ** The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, Linbury Studio Theatre, until 17 Jan ** Amazing, the change in the dance weather this Christmas. Where usually there is snow, fairies, tinkly celestas, a glut of Nutcrackers, traditions have turned topsy-turvy. At the Royal Ballet the sun has broken out (if mildly) in its Don Quixote, as I reported last week, and only the dependable English National Ballet is serving up a trad Nutcracker over Christmas, at the Coliseum. Yet I can’t remember a Christmas when there was so

Which would you rather dance in: Milton Keynes or Moscow’s Bolshoi? It’s that age-old dilemma for a star ballerina like Alina Cojocaru, who last week decided not to fulfil a matinee performance with English National Ballet in Bucks in order to fly to Russia to save a Bolshoi show. It left fans fuming. The Bolshoi are presently fielding La Dame aux camélias by the distinguished American choreographer John Neumeier, from which their ballerina Olga Smirnova had to withdraw because of injury. No other dancer, it is said, were available in Moscow to cover. The tiny, sweet-faced Cojocaru is one of Neumeier’s favourites. ENB’s star freed herself from her scheduled Swan

What happens when a torrent of exceptional male stars leave the stage and flood the jobs market? Especially in a world when classical ballet appears to be becoming less fashionable, eclipsed by contemporary fashions and nervousness about audiences? The titan of the Royal Ballet and Bolshoi, Irek Mukhamedov, was renowned at Covent Garden in the Nineties for his unique combination of muscle and gentlemanly manners, and if English National Ballet’s men are looking particularly refined on their winter tour of Swan Lake and Coppelia it may well be the result of his stellar coaching last month. ENB’s director Tamara Rojo invited him over from Slovenia, where he has been running

The Twittersphere never fails to surprise but it’s still hard to believe that last week #WorldBalletDay actually beat #HongKong and #Windows10 in the Twitter popularity stakes, on a day of barricades in the Chinese territory and Microsoft’s announcement of a new operating system. Twitter is a solid barometer of a vast and assertively ‘engaged’ segment of society whose demand to be noticed can sometimes be quite serious (see #HongKong). At other times, it’s merely incredible, as it was last Wednesday when some 5,000,000 tweets were sent by viewers of an internet love-in by the Royal Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Canadian, Australian and San Francisco ballet companies, who mustered with phenomenal geopolitical

Bold decisions are at the core of great artistic directorship. And Tamara Rojo, the ballet star leading English National Ballet, knows that well. Le Corsaire is not the usual ballet classic one craves to see. Yet it makes a splendid addition to the already vast and multifaceted repertoire of ENB. Created in 1856, this work has stood the test of time. Thanks to endless revivals, it has become one of the most manipulated and interpolated choreographic texts. Its current popularity, however, stems from the now legendary revival that the Kirov ballet presented in the West in 1989. Glitzy and star-studded, that staging paved the way for many others, which led