Word: ballets
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...could never follow the story of Raymonda,'" complained Prince Peter Lieven, after seeing the Marius Petipa-Alexander Glazunov ballet, which was premiered at St. Petersburg's Maryin-sky Theater...
Raymonda, as revised and presented last week by Leningrad's Kirov Ballet at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, makes no more sense. There's still the wicked Saracen and the noble Hungarian knight named Jean de Brienne, a duel, an attempted abduction, a wed ding, Spanish and Moorish dances, and of course the maiden Raymonda herself...
Impressionistic sets convey the mood of weightlessness and airiness suggested by Glazunov's pastel-colored music. Raymonda's feather-light leaps and soaring turns keep the heroine airborne for the better part of the performance. Raymonda is among the most difficult roles in Russian ballet, and it was rendered with elegance, grace and precision in two successive New York performances by Irina Kolpakova and Kaleria Fedicheva. Jean de Brienne, portrayed in both performances by Vladilen Semenov, Kolpakova's real-life husband, spends most of the time as Raymonda's elevator...
...idiosyncrasies that make great stars out of merely superb dancers, at least there is the consoling virtue that it does not matter much, except to close students of the dance, which ballerina is seen in any particular performance. And no U.S. company, lacking the Government subsidy that makes Russian ballet the most pampered of proletarian arts, can provide the costuming and scenery that creates the magical illusion of that not-now-and-never-was world, where the lovely princess does not spend her honeymoon water-skiing but soars to the sky on seemingly gossamer wings-with no political complications whatever...
...impeccably sentimental, and the supporting cast only a pinfeather short of perfection. Protean Dick Van Dyke is uneasy with his accent but nonetheless nimble as Bert, the cockney chimney sweep, whether hoofing it with a quartet of penguins or leading the sooty male chorus in a raffish rooftop ballet. Ed Wynn, as the risible Uncle Albert, floats upward every time he laughs, and soon has everyone aloft for the movie's most engaging scene, a high high tea. Though overlong and sometimes over-cute, Mary Poppins is the drollest Disney film in decades, a feat of prestidigitation with many...