Swan Lake

Why the Arts Council should kill off ENO and ENB

24 September 2022 9:00 am

It is high time the Arts Council put ENO and ENB out of their misery, says Rupert Christiansen

The magic of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

13 August 2022 9:00 am

Louise Levene on the male ballet troupe that realised the ballerinas have all the best lines

I miss the faint hiss of a spinning foot: Royal Ballet – Live reviewed

14 November 2020 9:00 am

Ballet lovers driven square-eyed by a drip feed of livestreaming and archive footage have been pining for the patter of…

Silly but stellar: Bolshoi Ballet’s Spartacus reviewed

10 August 2019 9:00 am

It’s togas-a-go-go as the Bolshoi bring Yuri Grigorovich’s 1956 ballet Spartacus to the Royal Opera House. Oh dear, I did…

La Bayadère was first staged by Marius Petipa at the Bolshoi in 1877, to the music of Ludwig Minkus

Where would ballet be without Marius Petipa?

27 July 2019 9:00 am

Should the man on the Clapham omnibus ever turn his mind to ballet, he is bound to envisage the work…

January as you would wish it: Royal Ballet’s Les Patineurs reviewed

5 January 2019 9:00 am

The Royal Ballet’s Les Patineurs is January as you would wish it. No slush, no new-year sales, no streaming chest…

Artists of the Royal Ballet against the easel-worthy backcloths of John Macfarlane’s ravishing designs for Swan Lake

Proper tutus, gorgeous designs, first-rate dancing: Royal Ballet’s new Swan Lake reviewed

26 May 2018 9:00 am

The Royal Ballet’s 2016 Frankenstein was a masterclass in how not to make narrative dance and the news that Liam…

The nymphs are hit and miss, but Osipova is a witty, multifaceted Sylvia: the Royal Ballet’s Sylvia reviewed

16 December 2017 9:00 am

You can pay homage to a ballet classic or you can tear it up and reinvent it. Both approaches were…

Wayne’s world

28 October 2017 9:00 am

Ballet would have been an obvious revenue stream for Sadler’s Wells when it reopened back in 1998 but straight-up classics…

Mad about the boy

5 August 2017 9:00 am

Tall, handsome boys with long legs and beautifully arched feet do not grow on trees (if only). Every ballet director…

Predictably meh: Scottish Ballet’s new Swan Lake reviewed

7 May 2016 9:00 am

Every ballet company wants a box-office earner. But why Scottish Ballet’s leader Christopher Hampson kept on at David Dawson until…

Dance from Edinburgh: a flamenco master who could tell classical ballet a thing or two

29 August 2015 9:00 am

Every August when London dims, Edinburgh calls, promising nothing less than ‘the greats of the arts’ at the International Festival.…

Wings of desire: film still of Natalia Makarova and Anthony Dowell in ‘Swan Lake’, 1980

Will the real Swan Lake please stand up

21 February 2015 9:00 am

Ismene Brown unpicks the great enigma of ballet theatre

ENB’s Swan Lake: the rights and wrongs of ballet thighs

17 January 2015 9:00 am

There’s been heated disagreement over the past week about what’s right and wrong. Is the rocket-propelled ex-Bolshoi enfant terrible Ivan…

Plisetskaya in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, 1964. She was one of the supreme trophies in the Soviet display case, the most garlanded, the most suspected

Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin: ‘The KGB put a microphone in our marriage bed'

25 October 2014 9:00 am

Ismene Brown talks to the Russian super-couple Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin about ballet, opera and the KGB

Romeo and Juliet: a Mariinsky masterclass

9 August 2014 9:00 am

According to some textbooks, one thing the fathers of Soviet choreography hastened to remove from ballet was that awkward-looking language…

A swan to die for at Sadler’s Wells

28 June 2014 9:00 am

Swans, swans, more swans. If the lifespan of a dance critic were calculated by the number of performances of Swan…