Death of Maya Plisestkaya - reactions

Maya Plisestskaya was a legend of ballet, and her death yesterday, aged 89, marked the passing of one of the true greats. Her grace, class, technique, passion, legacy were celebrated by many ballet dancers and fans around the world. Here is a round-up of their tributes.

Ballet Stars

A partir de 3'45 c'est unique.... From 3'45 it's unique !!!
Posted by Sylvie Guillem on Sunday, May 3, 2015

Maya Plisetskaya - one of the greatest, an immense loss for dance. pic.twitter.com/GIa89axnFI

— Tamara Rojo (@TamaraRojo1) May 3, 2015

Maya Plisetskaya defined ballet. I'll never forget her walking into Bolshoi Theatre to see a show and the audience erupted in applause. RIP

— David Hallberg (@DavidHallberg) May 2, 2015

The epoch of Great Ballet Legends comes to an end today… Unforgettable, terrific and beloved Maya Plisetskaya! pic.twitter.com/T2fp5mCJ6o

— Diana Vishneva (@dianavishneva) May 2, 2015

One of the greatest dancers of our time, Yves Saint Laurent's and Pierre Cardin's muse, beautiful and graceful Maya...

Posted by Mikhail Baryshnikov on Saturday, May 2, 2015

Forsythe ballet in London

We just don't get the chance to see many ballets created by William Forsythe in London. For some reason, he is not on the main companies' roster. So it's great to see Boston Ballet coming to town for the first time in 30 years with one of his pieces, The Second Detail. After really enjoying Artifact by Royal Ballet of Flanders last year, you bet I'll be there! Plus it's on a programme with Christopher Wheeldon's Polyphonia, which I also like (and some Jiri Kylian, oh well)

Here's a clip of the piece performed by Semperoper Ballet

Opus Jazz

A bit late on that one but this is worth checking out: two dancers of NY City Ballet got the idea to film Jerome Robbins' NY Export: Opus Jazz, and the idea is now happening. There is a trailer of their work on youtube, and a blog charting the progress of the shoot.
More background info on Dancing Perfectly Free.

Are we overdosing on Swan Lake?

Asks the Times, in a very interesting piece where Debra Caines asks top companies what's going on and why there are so many Swan Lakes being performed in London this year.

"Any national company has to have a Swan Lake because it is the very definition of classical ballet. It is the standard of measure and you have to keep it alive" says Kevin McKenzie, AD of American Ballet Theatre, who is performing Swan Lake in London this week. But "my heart sank when I realised that we and the Royal were performing Swan Lake at the same time,” McKenzie says. “If we had known, we would have looked to do a different repertoire. If the economy weren’t so bad, people might come to see both, but who is going to do that now?"

Triple bill @ Royal Opera House - review

Seven Deadly Sins/Carmen/Danse a Grande Vitesse

I can't believe the Financial Times' Clement Crisp gave such a bad review to this triple bill - ' it has all the attractions of Ebola fever' he said (he likes his random references, the Clement)

Seven Deadly Sins is more a show that ballet, with a big multi-level set, great lighting and the singing of Martha Wainwright. The dancing was ok, if nothing much, and I thought all the sins blended into one - lust (there was a lot of groping). It wasn't that bad.

Ek's Carmen was really interesting. I enjoyed the music, adapted from Bizet of course - lots of percussions and weird sounds, and the cast shouted a lot too, in an invented language as far as I could tell (think Spanish meets Russian meets Japanese) There was some really cool movement, very modern and angular, with lots of humourous bits thrown in.

I was worried I had idealised DGV in my head - maybe I remembered it as a better ballet than it was. Thankfully I was proved wrong. Some amazing lifts, fantastic group work, and this almost relentless music from Michael Nyman, marching and taking you on with it. It really works.

This couple was sat behind me and they had come in to see Martha Wainwright. 'Oh', she said before it started, 'there are 2 intervals, so many we can leave after the second, unless we want to see some real dance.' I turned around and told them they should stay 'the third piece is very good!'. At the end, she thanked me for my advice 'It was fantastic! Magical! Some pure dancing... I felt like a little girl... beautiful. It was also nice that there was no story to follow and you could just lose yourself into it.' Horray, a new convert?

Ballets Russes -100th birthday

We're going to hear a lot about it - Diaghilev created his Ballets Russes 100 years ago.

The revered Financial Times dance critic Clement Crisp is the first to write about it a very interesting article.

"The shock of Parade, of The Rite of Spring, of Afternoon of a Faun, of Les Noces, even of Apollo, still reverberates in performance. In 1909, his very first balletic year, he had commissioned Ravel to compose Daphnis and Chloé. Stravinsky came to public attention by way of the Ballets Russes. Debussy, de Falla, Prokofiev, Poulenc, Satie, Richard Strauss, Florent Schmidt, Milhaud, Constant Lambert, Auric, were to write scores. Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Pruna, Gris, de Chirico, Tchelichev, Larionov, Derain, Goncharova, were among his designers. The mind reels: we have no comparisons today.

The Diaghilev exhibitions and performances this year are a necessary celebration of one of the greatest artistic forces in the 20th century. They are also a reproach to today’s ballet with its play-safe timidities (“Oh good! It’s Swan Lake”) and its tunnel-visioned directors. Can a new Diaghilev emerge and fight the good fight as that great man once did, to galvanise the art of ballet for this century?"

Defection

Three principals from the Ballet Nacional de Cuba have defected and crossed the border to the US while on tour in Canada. Hanya Gutiérrez, Taras Dimitro Suárez and Miguel Ángel Blanco are all quite young and promising, and they have decided to leave their country to "dance in freedom and reach new styles, new things" said Miguel Ángel Blanco, who added "We are young, this is our opportunity. In Cuba, time has stopped"

We will of course remember the defection of Nureyev and Barishnikov from the Soviet Union in the second half of last century.