Benjamin Ella News Today

Abigail Anthony on “Generations” by Northern Ballet of Leeds, at the Royal Opera House, London.

Northern Ballet’s triple bill demonstrates the vital link between live music and action

Northern Ballet presents the Generations: Three Short Ballets triple bill at the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House as part of its national tour this autumn.

One could soundly advise any choreographer to avoid music so transcendentally great in itself that dance can add nothing except banal images. Only a handful of exceptions sneak past the rule: MacMillan’s setting of Song of the Earth, perhaps, and also Hans van Manen’s Adagio Hammerklavier, his audacious attempt to visualise the infinitely slow movement

Federico Bonelli, former longtime principal dancer at the Royal Ballet, is still fresh in his post as the new artistic director of Northern Ballet. Last week, in the studio theatre at the company’s headquarters in Leeds, he launched Northern’s autumn season with a tasty, if atypical, chamber-sized trio of chamber-sized, one-act dances that together span half a century.

Intimate Pages, the newest piece by the US dance star turned choreographer, is the inventive highlight of an adventurous triple bill

A year ago, Federico Bonelli was appointed as Northern Ballet’s new artistic director and he has marked that anniversary by announcing the company’s 2023/24 season, the first under his leadership and one that celebrates the breadth of the company’s work.

Proof, once again, that ballet has the muscle to tackle big topics. Review by Jenny Gilbert

The unmatched impact of Rudolf Nureyev, whose performances touched the lives of people around the world, will be celebrated on stage this September in London over five performances at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane - where Nureyev made his London debut - in a production curated by a former star of The Royal Ballet which will bring together an array of international talent both on and off stage.

Verdi’s Nabucco. Conductor: Marco Armiliato, director: Günter Krämer. With Plácido Domingo, Freddie De Tommaso, Riccardo Zanellato, Anna Pirozzi. Production from January 2021. Register for free and view here. ** 8 am ET: Wigmore Hall presents Timothy Ridout & Tom Poster. 2019 New Generation Artist Timothy Ridout joins Tom Poster from Wigmore Hall’s Associate Artists, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, to bring the world première of Kurt Schwertsik’s Haydn lived in Eisenstadt, wri...