Tag Archives: Royal Ballet Sinfonia

Venue: Theatre Royal Plymouth Choreography: David Bintley Music: Glenn Buhr Reviewer: Helen Tope The ballet begins with a familiar scene. Belle stands at the top of a bookcase, mired deep in words. She is the original bookish heroine; an outsider in her own family. Her father is a ship merchant, deep in debt – and the bailiffs are called. While ...

Choreography: Frederick Ashton Freely adapted and arranged by: John Lanchbery Music: Ferdinand Herold Reviewer: Frances Scott The Birmingham Royal Ballet is transporting audiences to a quaint community based on sunny Suffolk. The French ballet La Fille Mal Gardee(The Wayward Daughter) premiered in 1789 and was reworked by Fredrick Ashton in 1960, whose uniquely British blend has helped capture modern audiences. ...

Music: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Choreography: Marius Petipa, Peter Wright Reviewer: Helen Tope A ballet with an unrivalled pedigree, Sleeping Beauty is the classic everyone knows. The challenge, when taking on this production, is how to stop a classic turning into a cliché. The story of Princess Aurora, put to sleep by a witch’s curse, has plenty of scope for darkness beneath the glamour. ...

Music: Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky Choreographer: Marius Petipa/Peter Wright Reviewer: John Kennedy Shamelessly romantic, this Sleeping Beauty awakens the senses through a seduction of somnambulant stealth. Firmly in the classical repertoire’s treasure-chest marked Opulent Baroque: Excess In All Arenas, tonight’s extravagant costume-drama from the wardrobe of Mount Olympus blushes not a jot at its OTT self-indulgence. Philip Prowse’s design, an opulent neo-classical Renaissance ...

Music:  Pyotr Tchaikovsky Choreographers: Sir Peter Wright, Lev Ivanov and Vincent Redmon Reviewer: John Kennedy Embedded in Birmingham’s ballet advent season for the past 26 years, this captivating explosion of magical movement –  Sir Peter Wright’s production of The Nutcracker – remains an evergreen, deliriously romantic and enchanting delight. It was a truth universally acknowledged, mid-1960s, that an intellectual was one whom could ...

Choreographer: David Bintley Composer: Carl Davis Reviewer: John Kennedy Ennui-induced moments of desperate TV multi-channel surfing can hardly avoid a repeat somewhere of the groundbreaking 1981 World At War documentary series, or that career-defining scene in Pride & Prejudice where Colin Firth’s Darcy plunges with svelte-pelt otter eroticism in to that balm-bathing ornamental pond. Carl Davis’ compositions, indeed, are ever to the fore. Tonight, ...

Composer (Concerto) – Dmitri Shostakovich Choreography – Kenneth MacMillan Composer (Still Life Penguin) – Simon Jeffes Choreography – David Bintley Composer (Elite Syncopations) – Scott Joplin & Others Choreography – Kenneth MacMillan Reviewer: John Kennedy The opening performance, Concerto, in three movements, is set within an explosion of bold, expansive monochromatic space: a brilliant white backdrop framed by monolithic, angular ...

Music: Sergei Prokofiev Choreographer:  David Bintley Conductor: Philip Ellis Reviewer: Jo Beggs Birmingham Royal Ballet are a company unafraid to embrace the traditional. While all around them everyone’s trying to sex-up the classics, BRB know that producing something with no surprises can still be an audience winner. Cinderella certainly sends nobody home dissatisfied, and yet there’s a sense that the ...