Tag: Royal Opera House

Royal Opera House 2012/13 Season

The Royal Opera House

The Royal Ballet company has announced the Guest Artists who are due to don their show tights and ballet shoes and join the company for the 2012/13 season.

Tamara Rojo and Sergei Polunin are both set to return, despite Polunin’s controversial exit from the company earlier this year: it could be argued that Polunin was too hasty to throw his legwarmers out of his well-made and preparatory pram. However, he is set to re-join the Royal Ballet Company as a Guest Artist which, presumably, can be the favoured option for some dancers. Rojo and Polunin will return to the Royal Opera House for three farewell performances of Marguerite and Armand on 12, 15 and 21 February 2013. The pair originally danced the ballet to audience acclaim in October 2011, and is now expected to do the same 2 years on. Marguerite and Armand will be Rojo’s final farewell performance in Covent Garden as a reprise, before she takes up her new role as Artistic Director at English National Ballet in August 2012.

Additionally, Natalia Osipova is to debut alongside Carlos Acosta, a well-loved favourite of audiences globally. Osipova, Principal of the Mikhailovsky Ballet will make her Royal Ballet debut in Swan Lake, where she will dance alongside regular Principal Guest Artist Acosta on 10, 13 and 25 October. Next season will be Osipova’s first appearance (with her tutu) with the company, and it seems the arts scene is greatly anticipating her work with Acosta who is renowned worldwide for his strength, artistry and phenomenal technique.

Tickets for Swan Lake are currently on sale with public booking for Marguerite and Armand opening on 17 October.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

 

The Royal Ballet’s Mixed Programme – Ballo Della Regina and La Sylphide

Marie Taglioni in “La Sylphide”

Having opened on 26th May, The Royal Ballet are presenting a three performance stint at the Royal Opera House, with a mixed programme of George Balanchine’s Ballo Della Regina and August Bournonville’s La Sylphide. The sparkling Balanchine work is set to the ballet music which honours the Queen of Spain in Verdi’s opera Don Carlos, marrying opera and classical ballet in an invigorating and inspiring masterpiece.

Balanchine’s exquisite choreography, having choreographed for several Verdi operas at the start of his career, showcases fancy footwork, leaps and turns. The production’s zesty energy lifts audiences’ spirits, with dancers costumed in white and chiffon blue dresses. A superb curtain raiser, the immaculate technique of the dancers is sure to succeed, staged in 2012 by Merrill Ashley who brought the production to The Royal Ballet in 2011. In Balanchine’s original 1978 production, he was specifically inspired by Ashley’s warm yet bold technique for which he created the work, in a powerful combination of strength and delicacy.

La Sylphide sees principal Steven McRae make his debut in Bournonville’s romantic and truly magical fairytale as James the Scotsman, who falls passionately in love with a Sylph. In a flock of romantic tutus and each matching pointe shoe, the artists of The Royal Ballet are taking on a classic piece of ballet history, with Bournonville’s adaptation of the ballet first premiered in 1836 (Filippo Taglioni’s original version premiered in 1832). The uniquely delicate choreography is captured in 2012 by Danish choreographer Johan Kobborg, staging the love of a mortal for an elusive spirit, and the impossibility of this.

Evoked by traditional folk songs in Herman Løvenskiold’s score, the original 1832 La Sylphide was created to showcase the technique of Taglioni’s daughter Marie, one of the great 19th century ballerinas of the Romantic era. Bournonville was the first choreographer to recreate the magical narrative of La Sylphide in the marrying of the folk and the ethereal, and it is his version that has survived. It has been regularly performed by the Royal Danish Ballet since its premiere.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Royal Ballet Live

The Royal Opera House

Friday 23rd March was a mesmerising and completely unique day for ballet fans all over the world. The Royal Ballet at The Royal Opera House was streamed live all day from 10.30am on YouTube and The Guardian website, a world-first for dance.

The real-time day began with how every dancer’s day begins. The ritual of daily company class was followed by a whole day of rehearsals of the current season, such as the hi-tech spectacle of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The broadcast included interviews and an examination of dancers’ lives, countering the numerous myths which have arisen surrounding the “notorious” side of the ballet world. Finalising the day was an exclusive Insights event, which explored Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor’s new ballet in collaboration with musician Mark Ronson, Carbon Life. Contemporary McGregor demands entirely different physical aesthetics from the dancers, for example the abstract form and nude-coloured dance underwear of CHROMA.

Running parallel to the streaming was a Twitter trend, a constant feed by both official parties and fans alike, tweeting tales of tutus and discussing the blood, sweat and tears it takes to be a dancer in the famous pointe shoes of one of the world’s greatest ballet companies. The immense fan-base of The Royal Ballet was immeasurable, notably inspiring many followers to release their inner dancer and don their legwarmers!

The spectacular events unveiled online by The Royal Ballet give way to the speculation of a phenomenon inextricably linked to the streaming: the virtual ballet class. This would increase the accessibility of high-end ballet to general dance fans, providing a means for many more people to actively engage with dance by downloading or following a live, online ballet class. Dusting off the leotards and pink practice shoes may prompt the realisation of the integral “daily class” strand of ballet to the success of principal dancers to those participating in their first class.