Roberto Bolle is the king of dance. The king of shirtless dancing, to be exact. For all of us unlucky souls who do not have the pleasure of watching him dance in person, preferably sans top, Roberto has been gifting the world with many a shirtless selfie on social media. After doing the same with David Hallberg, we couldn’t resist trying to figure out what’s going on in the mind (and abs) of the American Ballet Theatre principal dancer during these…
A gaggle of girls cluster around me in the dimly-lit photo studio, waiting for my instructions. Nastya and Sasha have to leave early. “So how about you sit and I shoot you wearing your pointe shoes,” I say. The two long-limbed young women in question pull out a fresh pair of satin pink pointe shoes apiece and sit against the white studio backdrop, shifting slightly as I reposition them. Their friends disappear down the corridor to a dressing room. One…
Juliet Doherty talks pointe shoes, pilates and dispenses pirouette tips in our quickfire questions.…
Juliet Doherty is one of the new rising stars of ballet. As many have observed, she seems to have been built for classical dance, with her endless extensions and beautifully arched feet. But in the world of ballet, being biologically blessed means very little without the requisite hard work to learn how to use your gifts to your advantage. And despite a rocky relationship with the art when she was younger, Juliet’s commitment to the art has seen her star…
A few days ago I posted a .gif I made attributing Prince Florimund’s (Prince Desiré? Who knows) angst to his inability to eat his way out of feeling blue due to the demands of white ballet tights . While meant as a humorous take on one of the dilemmas of dance – white tights are a merciless mistress, as many dancers know, the number of ‘sad but true’-type comments surprised me. So I think it’s worth saying – although you’ve probably…
It’s 11am on a sunny Moscow day and I’m standing outside the Press Office of the Kremlin Ballet. “Singapore…” the lady behind the glass-panelled counter sighs when she sees my passport, and disappears to the back of the office.…
We’d put money on Demelza Parish being made from bottled sunshine. Delightfully ebullient, she’s a package of charm backed by substance – and she dances too. From childhood Swan Queen dreams, she worked her way into the famous halls of White Lodge, the Royal Ballet’s Lower School and at 17, was awarded a contract to dance at the Royal Ballet. Since then, she’s become a stalwart of the Royal’s corps de ballet, dancing countless Swan Lakes, Manons and Giselles, a Flower…
After the premiere episode of Breaking Pointe on America’s CW channel, everyone had an opinion on Allison DeBona. Most of these opinions weren’t flattering. Breaking Pointe was a show that followed the dancers of Ballet West, under the banner of their leader/artistic director/big daddy Adam Sklute. And Allison DeBona, a Ballet West dancer and one of the show’s main characters, was seen by many as, to put it mildly, not a particularly nice person. (The word ‘bitch’ was bandied about.) …
New York Magazine recently ran a ‘day in the life’ photo essay featuring David Hallberg. While it’s great to get a peek into the daily routine of the Bolshoi/ABT principal (he planks! He’s human after all!), we were mostly impressed by his range of beautifully bemused faces.…
If you had asked Joy Womack this time last year where she thought her ballet career would take her in 365 (and a quarter) days from then, it’s highly unlikely the answer would be, ‘principal dancer at the Kremlin Ballet’. And yet that’s exactly where she is now. It was where she spent the past few months dancing a season of Nutcrackers and Swan Lakes and Giselles, instead of on the stage of the Roman-columned theatre down the road –…
A compilation of duelling performances of Roland Petit’s Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, with Baryshnikov’s version in White Nights played against portrayals by Rudolf Nureyev, Nicolas Le Riche and Vladimir Shklyarov.…
We’ve been celebrating Brazil 2014 by photoshopping our favourite dancers into the World Cup, in our Footballet series. Here’s what we’ve come up with a week into the World Cup.…