News: Romeo and Juliet rehearsal to be live-streamed on 11 September 2015

If you didn't manage to get tickets to this Royal Ballet's Insight event you can watch it live on YouTube. More information available here.

Tickets for these events always sell out so quickly, so I think it's really great the ROH is trying to make these events more accessible!

Ballet Dressed Up and the Deloitte Ignite Festival 2015

Every year, the Royal Opera House kicks of the new season by throwing open its doors to the public for a month of (mostly) free events and activities for the whole family – known as the Deloitte Ignite festival.  I attended the festival on Sunday, September 6^th.  There was plenty to see and do, from performances in the Covent Garden piazza (including one man with a piano mounted on a four-wheeled bicycling negotiating the cobble stones of Covent Garden market while playing perfectly syncopated rag time – it was amazing!), to festival food, to an opera karaoke booth.

But my favourite event was undoubtedly “Ballet dressed-up”. At this event in the Paul Hamlyn Hall David Donnelly and Hannah Grennell, to amazing artists from the Royal Ballet, performed a short piece choreographed by Hubert Essakow, inspired by the story of Romeo and Juliette.
 

David Donnelly and Hannah Grennell
of the Royal Ballet

They first performed the piece wearing simple, dark coloured training gear. They then performed the piece again several times, each time wearing a different costume. The costumes ranged from the period costumes worn in MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliette, to contemporary jeans cut-offs matched with heavy boots, to sheep costumes. Each time the audience was asked to describe how the performance was perceived by them, and each time the dancers described how the costume impacted the way the danced. It was very interesting! 



David Donnelly and Hannah Grennell
of the Royal Ballet

One of my favourite iterations was the performance in which the two dancers were connected by a pair of extended double-ended tights, with one end worn over each their heads. Every time they moved apart, they were drawn back together by the elastic material of the tights.  One audience member observed that this could represent the struggle Romeo and Juliette had to go through to be together. Another audience member, aged roughly eight, observed that it involved a lot of team work. :)

I was also really enjoyed the performance in which the dancers wore Eastern inspired costumes that involved long pieces of fabric tied around their wastes. The dancers were forced to swirl the fabric around in order to not to become entangled in it, creating beautiful shapes in the process. I was also very impressed by Hanna’s slightly deranged performance wearing a blood stained shirt (fake blood, we were reassured) and one red high heel - she using the other to stab herself with.

David Donnelly and Hannah Grennell
of the Royal Ballet

The finale involved a pair of costumes that had masses of balloons attached to them. Even the dancers could hide a giggle as David tried to turn Hanna under his arm while trying to manoeuvre around the balloons.

All in all it was a very interesting and entertaining event. The Deloitte Ignite festival will continue until the end of the month, and I highly recommend trying to catch on of the events. More details can be found here.

The Royal Ballet's 2015/16 Season

The Royal Ballet recently announced details of the 2015/16 season and I am very excited! This is what I am most looking forward to:

- Raven Girl will be returning to the stage in October. This was one of the first performances I saw at the Royal Opera House and ultimately what got me excited about the Royal Ballet. It was the first time I saw Sarah Lamb perform (the role of Raven Girl was created for her), and I have been her fan ever since. It is also the my favorite Wayne McGregor ballet and the final pas-de-deux between Sarah Lamb and Eric Underwood remains the most beautiful thing I've ever seen on stage. You can watch the rehearsing the scene here. 

- Elizabeth - a ballet about the life of Elizabeth I. This ballet was created by Will Tuckett for the Royal Ballet in 2013 and was performed at the Royal Navel College in Greenwich. It will be coming to the Linbury Studio in January. I don't know much about it, but it sounds interesting.

- A Christopher Wheeldon triple bill, including a new work, in February AND his Winter's Tale returning to the main stage in April. 

- Liam Scarlett's new ballet, Frankenstein, coming to the main stage in May. Scarlett has an incredible talent for story-telling through choreography and seems to have a thing for dark themes. I love his Hansel and Gretel.

- Orphee et Eurydice - not ballet but opera for a change. The reason I am excited about this one is because of choreographer Hofesh Shechter's involvement as co-director. His recent collaboration with the Royal Ballet was incredible, and I am excited to learn that he will be collaborating with the Royal Opera House again.

Further details of the Royal Ballet's 2015/16 season can be found here.

Sergei Polunin

In June 2010, at the age of only 19, Sergei Polunin became the Royal Ballet's youngest ever principal dancer. Two year later, he shocked the ballet world by resigning the Royal Ballet with immediate effect. Here are a few of the things he's gotten up to since:

Sia and Maddie Ziegler

I love Sia's music videos with Maddie Ziegler. She is such a talented and expressive dancer. I can't believe she is only 12!