Nureyev & Friends: A Gala Tribute DVD

Nureyev & Friends: A Gala Tribute DVD is now available from the usual sources (Amazon etc.)

This performance, recorded in 2013, includes the following pas de deux, with some of today's top ballet stars:

La Sylphide  (Bournonville) Iana Salenko and Marian Walter
La Bayadere Shades (Petipa) Evgenia Obraztsova and Evgeni Ivanchenko
Manon bedroom pdd   (MacMillan) Tamara Rojo and Federico Bonelli
Two Pieces for HET   (van Manen) Maia Makhateli and Remi Wortmeyer
Raymonda act 3  (Petipa) Aurelie Dupont and Mathias Heymann
Sleeping Beauty act 3 grand pas de deux  (Petipa) Evgenia Obtaztsova and Dimitri Gudanov
Manfred  (Nureyev) Mathias Heymann
Marguerite and Armand   (Ashton) Tamara Rojo and Rupert Pennefather
Swan Lake act 2  "White Swan" (Ivanov) Daria Vasnetsova and Evgeni Ivanchenko
Le Corsaire   (Petipa) Aleksandra Timofeeva and Vadim Muntagirov

Nureev & Friends DVD on Sale from D&D Art Productions on Vimeo.

If you love ballet, please check out my season of outstanding ballet trips by clicking here.

GET MORE BALLET OUT OF LIFE WITH TOURS EN L'AIR

Use the buttons below to share this post on facebook, twitter, by email, or other social media.

Follow me 

on twitter: @thewordlady

on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katherine.barber.37

You can sign up to have my ballet updates delivered directly to your inbox here.

Privacy policy: we will not sell, rent, or give your name or address to anyone. You can unsubscribe at any point

Copenhagen-Hamburg Ballet trip now booking

Carlson Wagonlit Victor Travel

101 - 8800 Dufferin Street, Concord, ON L4K 0C5

TICO Ontario registration #1892647

presents

Tours en l'air

Ballet Holidays

escorted by

Canada's Word Lady,

Katherine Barber

Copenhagen and Hamburg

11-20 March 2014

10 days, 9 nights

6 ballet performances

The best of Bournonville performed by

Royal Danish Ballet, and the world-renowned Hamburg Ballet in works by Neumeier and Cranko

Tuesday 11 March

Arrive Copenhagen. Check in to 4-star Copenhagen Admiral Hotel: www.admiral-hotel-copenhagen.com, 7 minutes walk, 3 minutes by taxi from the Royal Theatre.

Wednesday 12 March

930: “Breakfast with Bournonville”. The Royal Danish Ballet's Junior Company presents excerpts from Bournonville's ballets, e.g. Napoli, A Folk Tale, The Kermesse in Bruges, as well as their own choreographies.

Afternoon: Private guided coach tour of Copenhagen (3 hours, including opportunities to get off the coach at major sights)

6 pm: Welcome dinner

8 pm: Royal Danish Ballet: Manon (MacMillan)

Thursday 13 March

Watch Royal Danish Ballet company class

Rest of day at leisure.

Friday 14 March

Morning: Visit Royal Danish Ballet School (to be confirmed)

Afternoon at leisure

8 pm: Royal Danish Ballet: Napoli

Saturday 15 March

At leisure. Evening: 3-course dinner at the award-winning SALT restaurant before Royal Danish Ballet: Napoli

Sunday 16 March

Depart Copenhagen by air for Hamburg.

Arrive Hamburg. Check in to 5-star SIDE hotel (20 minutes from airport, approx. 1-minute walk from opera house): www.side-hamburg.de/en/side-home.html

Monday 17 March

Morning: Visit to Hamburg Ballettzentrum, home of the Hamburg Ballet and Hamburg Ballet School

Afternoon: 2-hour private guided coach tour of Hamburg, including opportunities to get off the coach at major sights

1930: Hamburg Ballet performance of all-Neumeier program: Vaslav, At Midnight, Chopin Dialogue, Kinderszenen

Tuesday 18 March

130 pm: guided tour of Hamburg State Opera

730 pm: Hamburg Ballet performance of Onegin (Cranko)

Wednesday 19 March

(Optional, weather permitting) Day trip by train to Unesco World Heritage medieval town of Lubeck (one hour from Hamburg)

Farewell dinner

Thursday 20 March

Check out of hotel and depart Hamburg

GROUP SIZE LIMITED TO 20!

Total Package CA$3699 per person

based on double occupancy

Single supplement both cities: CA$1250

Single supplement Hamburg only (if sharing in Copenhagen): CA$550*

*only two twin rooms available

All prices valid till 15 December 2013

LAND-ONLY PACKAGE allows you the flexibility of arranging travel from your most convenient departure point,

on the dates and times you prefer,

and to extend your stay if you wish.

Victor Travel's experienced agents

will be happy to assist you with

flight arrangements.

Package includes:

9 nights double-share accommodation

Daily breakfast

Premium orchestra seats for 6 ballets

Royal Danish Ballet company class

Private guided bus tour of Copenhagen 

Private guided bus tour of Hamburg

Private guided tour of Hamburg opera house

Visit to Hamburg Ballettzentrum

Three 3-course dinners

Ballet enrichment program: ballet notes and informal pre-performance talks and post-performance reviews with tour leader

Please note that this program must be sold as a package. Extra hotel nights can be added on (subject to availability), but we cannot offer individual components separately or break the package into shorter installments. As a significant benefit of the Tours en l'air package is sharing the complete experience with those with common interests, we do not offer an “accommodation only” option.

Not included:

All airfares

Meals and transfers not specifically mentioned in this itinerary

Beverages with meals

Items of a personal nature, e.g. phone calls

Cancellation insurance

and hospital/medical insurance

All items and activities listed as optional in this brochure

For more information:

email toursenlair@gmail.com

phone: 416.693.4496

Elite, Chroma, Wayfarer at National Ballet of Canada reviews

Michael Crabb, Toronto Star:

"The triple bill that opened Wednesday, all revivals of popular works from the repertoire, has something for everyone — veteran fans who enjoy a walk down memory lane and younger fans who really like their dance well spiced. The program spans different eras, evokes varied emotions and offers a clear sense of how ballet has evolved during the past 30 years or more."


http://www.toronto.com/article/732637--review-national-ballet-s-triple-bill-ends-season-on-exhilarating-note

Paula Citron, Globe and Mail
 "The young man in blue (Zdenek Konvalina), with his obvious pain, is manipulated by his destiny, the man in red (Guillaume Côté). Konvalina captures the fragility beautifully, while Côté has never looked more commanding. The chemistry between the men is palpable. Their performances are magnificent...
Dylan Tedaldi and Brendan Saye continue to impress.
And one to watch is newcomer Adji Cissoko. She’s a knockout"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/theatre-and-performance/at-the-national-ballet-making-the-invisible-visible/article4267601/

Gary Smith, Hamilton Spectator
 "Sonia Rodriguez and Aleksandar Antonijevic, dancers of a certain age, eat up space to sear images on your brain. With 43 years of dance between them, they prove they aren’t getting older, just better. Hot as smokin’ pistols, their physical perfection melts into globs of passion as they fire the heat at the core of this work.
They’re not alone. Greta Hodgkinson, Robert Stephen and Brendan Saye stand out as well in a tight, combustible unit that gives [Chroma] edge."
http://www.thespec.com/whatson/article/743205--drama-defines-this-triple-bill

If you love ballet, check out my season of outstanding ballet trips in 2012-13 by clicking here.

GET MORE BALLET OUT OF LIFE WITH TOURS EN L'AIR

Romeo and Juliet balcony pas de deux

Here's a hot tip. Two YouTube postings have just appeared of Robert Tewsley and Miyako Yoshida performing Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet balcony pas de deux. These are fabulous dancers, and though they are in practice clothes in a sterile dance studio, they convey more emotion than many people do in a full-blown production! Another bonus, the clip is in HD so the picture is much sharper than most on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jgwte9NGy0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAo_0FfawK0

Kobayashi Ballet The Invitation

Last night I saw Noriko Kobayashi Ballet Theatre perform their "English" mixed program.

Noriko Kobayashi Ballet Theatre, a small but ambitious Tokyo-based company founded in 1973, specializes in performing the 20th-century repertoire of the Royal Ballet, keeping alive many masterpieces of the Ashton, MacMillan and de Valois repertoire rarely seen elsewhere. Their mixed program performed August 19 and 20 in Tokyo was no exception. "Mixed" was the word, as the combination of Ashton's frothy display of classical virtuosity from 1933, Les Rendezvous, with MacMillan's dark and tormented The Invitation, followed by his fun-filled Elite Syncopations, made for a very varied night.

Female principal Ayako Ono's lovely lightness and joyousness, with plenty of Ashtonian épaulement and beautiful arms, were the highlight of Les Rendezvous, a typically charming Ashton work in which "Walkers Out" meet in a park and dance. Unfortunately, her partner, Makoto Nakamura, performed somewhat mechanically and without much elegance or musicality. Indeed, the male dancers, many of them borrowed from Tokyo's New National Theatre, were the weakest part of the company; there was a notable lack of pointed feet in jumps. Auber's music, at times a little bombastic, was nonetheless dancy. The costumes, to the original design by William Chappell, white romantic tutus for the women edged with pink, were suitably charming, although the pink-ribbon headdresses looked unfortunately like gift bows taped to their heads.

Elite Syncopations, which usually has western audiences in fits of laughter, fell a little flat. The requisite charisma and pizzazz are perhaps qualities that do not come so easily to Japanese-trained dancers. The Calliope Rag solo performed by Kizuna Takahata, which needs a lot of sexpot glamour to come across the footlights, was simply perky. Undermined from the start by the fact that both dancers were the same height, the pas de deux for the tall girl and short boy (Ikuko Kusumoto and Atsushi Sasaki) failed to elicit even so much as a ripple of laughter from the audience on opening night. The second cast (Yuki Ohmori and Akimitsu Yahata) were much more successful at capturing the comedy of this pas de deux.

Ripples of laughter were the last thing on anyone's mind during The Invitation, a one-act story ballet depicting the loss of an Edwardian-era teenage girl's innocence when she is raped by an older man visiting her family. This ballet is a little like a Mayerling in embryo, and, watching the story inexorably unfold, the audience feels the same sensation of impending horror. The whole cast acquitted themselves well with finely delineated characters. As the girl, a part created by Lynn Seymour, Akiko Shimazoe was excellent. A particularly moving moment was when she tottered on not-fully-pointed pointe after being raped. As The Husband, guest artist Robert Tewsley displayed compelling stage presence and dramatic intensity. Convincingly remorseful after the rape, he nonetheless quickly collected himself to walk off arm in arm with his wife as if nothing had happened.

Ms. Kobayashi is to be commended for presenting such an audience-challenging program, especially a mere week after Japanese balletomanes had sated themselves on several weeks of classical warhorses and international guest stars in the World Ballet Festival.