Tag Archives: The Royal Ballet

ADÈS, MCGREGOR, AND DEAN — WORLD PREMIERES

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This weekend at the Music Center, choreographer Wayne McGregor, composer and conductor Thomas Adès, artist Tacita Dean, the Royal Ballet, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic present two world premieres, preceded by a work—OUTLIER—new to West Coast audiences.

LIVING ARCHIVE: AN AI PERFORMANCE EXPERIMENT—danced by Company Wayne McGregor—is a first look at the results of McGregor’s collaboration with Google’s Arts and Culture Lab to develop a choreographic tool that generates new outcomes for works in McGregor’s repertoire. This iteration of LIVING ARCHIVE will be danced to Adès’ In Seven Days, performed by the LA Phil.

The evening will close with the dance world premiere of Part One of McGregor’s full-evening work THE DANTE PROJECT. Set to Adès’ new eponymous composition, INFERNO will be performed by the Royal Ballet, and features a set designed by Tacita Dean—her first work for dancers and the stage—and lighting design by Lucy Carter and Simon Bennison.

ADÈS AND MCGREGOR—A DANCE COLLABORATION

OUTLIER, LIVING ARCHIVE: AN AI PERFORMANCE EXPERIMENT, and THE DANTE PROJECT PART 1 (INFERNO)

Friday and Saturday, July 12 and 13, at 7:30 pm.

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

135 North Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

From top: Wayne McGregor, The Dante Project (Inferno), featuring Royal Ballet dancers Fumi Kaneko and Edward Watson; Watson and company; Calvin Richardson; artists of the Royal Ballet. Wayne McGregor, Living Archive, featuring Company Wayne McGregor dancers Izzac Carroll, Maria Daniela Gonzalez, and Jordan James Bridge; Chien-Shun Liao; Carroll; Rebecca Bassett-Graham and Carroll. Wayne McGregor, Outlier, artists of Company Wayne McGregor; Lauren Cuthbertson, Jacob O’Connell, and Joshua Barwick; Gonzalez, O’Connell, and Bassett-Graham. Photographs by Cheryl Mann, July 12, 2019, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. Images courtesy and © Wayne McGregor, Tacita Dean, the Royal Ballet, the Music Center, the photographer, and the performers.

THE ROYAL BALLET — MAYERLING

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Forty years after its American premiere at the Shrine Auditorium, Kenneth MacMillan’s MAYERLING—a tour de force of choreographic virtuosity and innovation, and the first full-length ballet constructed around a male lead—returns to Los Angeles for a three-performance engagement by the Royal Ballet at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

MAYERLING tells the story of Crown Prince Rudolf (1858–1859)—heir apparent to the throne of Austria-Hungary—his mistress Mary Vetsera, and the events leading up to their murder-suicide at Mayerling, the prince’s hunting lodge outside Vienna.

“Most of MacMillan’s ballets, descriptive or abstract, tackle themes of crisis and violence… The dramatic momentum of MAYERLING springs from a chilly dissection of both… The fast-moving scenario is exactly matched by the ferocious pace and energy of MacMillan’s choreography. The action revolves around the startling progression of duets for the two principal dancers: abrasive, threatening, erotic and geared almost without respite to destruction.

“MacMillan projects the dark underside of romanticism: the ballet has domestic interludes of great charm but they’re brief, the dominant mood is acrid, sour, and glitteringly dark.” — Bryan Robertson, The Spectator, February 25, 1978

As Robertson points out, MAYERLING is famous for its numerous pas de deux and requirements of great stamina and artistry by its male leads. On opening night, Royal Ballet principal Ryoichi Hirano will dance the role of Rudolf. On Saturday night principal Matthew Ball takes over, and for the Sunday matinee, principal Thiago Soares is the Crown Prince. Principal Sarah Lamb dances the role of Marie Larisch on opening night and Mary Vetsera on Saturday night.

MacMillan—a former dancer who was the Royal Ballet’s artistic director throughout most of the 1970s and its principal choreographer from 1977 onward—died in 1992 at age 62, backstage at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, during a performance of a revival of MAYERLING.

THE ROYAL BALLET—MAYERLING

Friday and Saturday, July 5 and 6, at 7:30 pm.

Sunday, July 7, at 2 pm.

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

135 North Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

MAYERLING program

From top: Ryoichi Hirano as Crown Prince Rudolf and Sarah Lamb as Marie Larisch in Mayerling, photograph by Helen Maybanks; Francesca Hayward as Princess Stephanie and Hirano, photograph by Maybanks; Lamb as Mary Vetsera, photograph by Alice Pennefather; Alexander Campbell as Bratfisch, the prince’s confident, photograph by Maybanks; Lauren Cuthbertson as Mary and Thiago Soares as Rudolf (3), photographs by Maybanks. Images courtesy and © the photographers, the performers, and the Royal Ballet.