Ballet
Swan Lake
★★★★☆ Classically beautiful
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s traditional Swan Lake spellbinds its audience with Tchaikovsky’s iconic and emotive score performed live by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, just as Odile spellbinds Prince Siegfried.
The Snow Queen
★★★★☆ Beautifully wintry
The traditional Scottish Ballet festive slot may have shifted forward a little due to the King’s pantomime moving across town, but the return of The Snow Queen still manages to provide the appropriate Christmas glitter.
Playhouse pulls Russian ballet
Russian State Ballet Company of Siberia cancelled
The Edinburgh Playhouse has cancelled next week’s performances from Russian State Ballet Company of Siberia, because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Gene Kelly Ballet for SB
Scottish Ballet is planning a hybrid tour and feature-length film this autumn of Starstruck, a reworking with new elements of Gene Kelly’s 1960 ballet Pas de Dieux, which will be getting its UK premiere in the production.
The Secret Theatre
★★★★☆ Christmas treat
The Secret Theatre may not entirely make up for missing a Christmas trip to the ballet but succeeds impressively on its own terms.
Beauty and the Beast
★★★★☆ Haunting:
Birmingham Royal Ballet put on a truly magical and haunting performance of David Bintley’s Beauty and the Beast, playing the Festival Theatre until Saturday.
Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake
★★★★★ Magnificent:
It’s 23 years since Mathew Bourne changed the gender of the swans in Swan Lake for his choreography of the ballet, which is at the Festival Theatre all week to Saturday.
New Edinburgh Ballet School
Schaufuss announces new ballet school:
Peter Schaufuss has revealed that he will be opening the full-time Edinburgh Festival Ballet School, from September 2019, with an initial masterclass session in March this year.
Bourne’s Cinders for Fest Theatre
June 2018 date for Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella:
Matthew Bourne’s Olivier award-winning ballet of Cinderella is to play Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre in June as part of a major UK tour which starts this Christmas at Sadler’s Wells in London.
The Nutcracker
★★★★★ A Christmas Cracker:
With enough spectacle and showmanship to keep kids big and small spellbound, Scottish Ballet’s revival of Peter Darrel’s Nutcracker at the Festival Theatre and on tour is the perfect Christmas present.
