#Lyndsey Winship

[biglisbonnews]

Punched, insulted and excoriated in song … our critics on the artists who hit back In a shocking attack, the ballet director Marco Goecke smeared dog excrement in the face of Wiebke Hüster in retaliation for her review. Yet it isn’t the first time an artist has assaulted a critic. Our writers share their worst momentsI was biffed on the head by David Storey in 1976 after describing his play Mother’s Day as “a stinker”. But that rankled less than sustained verbal assaults by Jonathan Miller late in his career. He once sent me a New Year’s Day card urging me to cease my “foul pork scratchings” and told an interviewer that ideally directors should be reviewed by their peers rather than “nonentities like Michael Billington”. Better a Storey thump than a Miller moan. Michael Billington Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/feb/14/critics-on-the-artists-who-hit-back

[likea-black-widow-baby]

@sweet-sappphic reacts to Agent Carter

[ophelia-coeur]

MEDIA IN MARCH

Books

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee

Video Essays

The Horrifying Panopticon of West Elm Caleb by Sarah Z

The “Cheugy” Problem - Why No One Can Keep Up with Trends by The Take

Turning Red: The Importance of Tween Girls and Female Character Designs by Cheyenne Lin

The Giver: Teen Dystopian Filth by Big Joel

"CONFIDENCE" is a cult by Mina Le

No, Idiocracy Is Not A Documentary by Sarah Z

Articles

Hustle and hype: the truth about the influencer economy by Symeon Brown

Dancers and dissidents: how ballet became a political football between east and west by Lyndsey Winship

A drowning world: Kenya’s quiet slide underwater by Carey Baraka

Waarom de doodsreutel van het ooit zo populaire Instagram steeds luider klinkt by Katrin Swartenbroux

Zonder die leeglopers van leerkrachten is er geen onderwijs by Brenda Froyen

Podcast

"The Death Of The Department Store" by 'The Long Read' from The Guardian

Film

Taylor Tomlinson: Look At You

Turning Red

[mamusiq]

Ultimate sleazeball or tortured romantic?

The truth about serial seducer Casanova

He’s been portrayed as a lascivious lothario, a likable scamp and even a female librarian. But who was the real Casanova? As the world’s most infamous lover returns to the stage, we reveal all

Lyndsey Winship

Wed 20 Apr 2022 01.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 20 Apr 2022 10.07 EDT

‘Once I started the research,” says Kenneth Tindall, “I was shocked at how much Casanova achieved, how brilliant his mind was, how many different roles he played in one lifetime.” The son of two Venetian actors, Casanova was a priest, a violinist, an author, a gambler, a soldier, a diplomat, an occultist and a prisoner. Tindall begins his wonderment afresh: “To translate The Iliad, to speak seven languages, to start the state lottery in France – the list is sort of endless. I came away thinking, as I sat there watching Netflix, ‘I’m really not living enough!’”

But then, everyone thinks they know who Giacomo Casanova was: the famous cad whose name became synonymous with seduction; the breaker of hearts all across Europe. But if that were all there was to the 18th-century libertine, there’s no way he would have become such an enduring cultural figure, inspiring everything from the 1918 novella Casanova’s Homecoming by Arthur Schnitzler to the Pet Shop Boys song Casanova in Hell. Then there are the film stars who brought the unscrupulous lover back to life, from Bela Lugosi to Richard Chamberlain and John Malkovich. More recently, we’ve had a Divine Comedy album, a Horrible Histories song – and a ballet by Tindall, premiered in 2017, now restaged and touring the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/apr/20/ultimate-sleazeball-tortured-romantic-casanova-truth-serial-seducer-lothario-heath-ledger-sienna-miller

[galina-ulanova]

She’s a ballerina who clearly relishes being on stage. That concentrated face seen in rehearsals replaced by a blazing smile, bright eyes and flashes of fire.

Lyndsey Winship on Yekaterina Krysanova (Bolshoi Ballet, 2016)

[gramilano]

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a01

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a02

Akram Khan’s new Giselle is a work of immense confidence and scouring anger. Reimagining one of ballet’s most-loved classics, the story of a village girl betrayed by a nobleman, this production is another big, ambitious risk taken by English National Ballet under director Tamara Rojo. It proves to be a triumph for the company and its choreographer. – Zoë Anderson, THE INDEPENDENT, 2016

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a03

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a04

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a05

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a06

This first act may be the most thrilling hour of dance I’ve seen all year. Khan and his crack team work with electric intelligence. Scraps of Adolphe Adam’s original music skim like memories through Vincenzo Lamagna’s pounding, intense score. Mark Henderson lights the dancers from all angles so they look eerily displaced in the dust-swirled air… Khan triumphantly nails the core of the old story and makes it speak to an itinerant new world. – David Jays, THE SUNDAY TIMES, 2016

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a07

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a08

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a09

Full of visual spectacle, every image is exactingly composed thanks to designer Tim Yip and Mark Henderson’s lighting – there’s lots of dramatic silhouette, or the light just catching the wild hair of the Wilis (spirits), who look like they’ve escaped from a Japanese horror film, pointe shoes stabbing the floor like needles. This is an epic Giselle, and a triumph. – Lyndsey Winship, THE EVENING STANDARD, 2016

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton

Khan’s choreography has never looked better. Working with such finely tuned ballet dancers has given his movement more uplift, especially in the extremely tender duets for Giselle and Albrecht. Yet it’s the sensational group dances that resonate most: earthbound, visceral, feral and intense, and moulded with a sculptural beauty. – Debra Craine, THE TIMES, 2016

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a13

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a11

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a12

The whole company dances superbly and are a pleasure to watch, and one of the most impressive elements in the evening was Vincenzo Lamagna’s music. With just a hint of the original score, Lamagna moved from profound evil to tender love while never breaking the story’s thread. At least ENB is marketing a winner. – Jeffery Taylor, THE SUNDAY EXPRESS, 2017

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton

Mr. Khan has found a movement language that combines an earthy, rooted physicality with balletic grace and power, and he both invokes the detailed hand moves and gestural richness of kathak, and discretely alludes to the original choreography. The first act is filled with an exhilarating group dance. The second act, with its frightening streaming-haired wilis has horror-movie frissons and beauty in equal parts, with a moving and brilliantly inventive pas de deux for Giselle and Albrecht… Bravo to the entire company, which performs with impressive commitment, clearly energized by Mr. Khan’s work. The gamble was worthwhile. – Roslyn Sulcas, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 2016

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a15

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a16

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a17

Albrecht and Giselle’s final pas de deux is entrancingly sad. She’s not dead, but she’s not quite alive, either. They circle each other, their touches feather-light. He embraces her; she slips through his arms and vanishes, never to return. Flaws and narrative lacunae notwithstanding, this is a hugely impressive production and ENB’s dancers do it full justice. – Luke Jennings, THE OBSERVER, 2016

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton

It would be something of a spoiler to describe how Khan reproduces the spook-factor of the original second act, in which the so-called wilis, the ghosts of betrayed young girls, hunt down passing men and take their revenge. Let’s just say he matches it, surpasses it even. The person behind me was audibly enthralled, and quietly sobbed throughout the final minutes. – Jenny Gilbert, THE ARTS DESK, 2017

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a19

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a20

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton a22

The gamble paid off. Akram Khan’s bold reimagining of Giselle has proved a critical and commercial success for Tamara Rojo’s English National Ballet. – Louise Levene, FINANCIAL TIMES, 2017

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton

The power of this evening lies less in the plotting than in the visually transfixing world created on stage. The wall is used to monumental effect: a sinister class barrier in Act 1, it becomes a portal into the industrial hell of Act 2, where Giselle and the ghosts of other betrayed women dance vengeance on their men.

Khan’s choreography rises to the scale of his set design. He uses his 40-strong cast to impressive effect, not only in the big, thrumming ensemble dances, but also in the elaboration of choreographic imagery; the fluid weave of bodies that rise protectively around the dying Giselle, the human threshing machine created by the Wilis as they wield their warrior staves, their feet drumming lethally on pointe.

Stylistically, Khan has steeped himself in the language of ballet, but reinvented it with a rhythmic and visceral heft and a new gestural vocabulary. – Judith Mackrell, THE GUARDIAN, 2016

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton

Ever since Matthew Bourne’s ‘gay’ Swan Lake 20 years ago, we’ve become used to the idea of revamping sacred ballet classics. But in taking on Giselle, Akram Khan hasn’t simply jumped on to a trendy bandwagon: he has produced something profoundly different – and very special indeed…

But this is also English National Ballet’s triumph. The corps rises magnificently to Khan’s taxing demands… A final bravo to ENB’s director, Tamara Rojo, who commissioned the ballet. It may well rank as a masterpiece of 21st-century dance. – Rupert Christiansen, THE MAIL ON SUNDAY, 2016

Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, © Dasa Wharton

English National Ballet ON TOUR with Akram Khan’s Giselle until 6 May 2018

Akram Khan’s Giselle – ENB’s smash hit in words and pictures Akram Khan’s new Giselle is a work of immense confidence and scouring anger. Reimagining one of ballet’s most-loved classics, the story of a village girl betrayed by a nobleman, this production is another big, ambitious risk taken by English National Ballet under director Tamara Rojo.

[nikmediaventures]

Star debuts and happy returns: theatre, dance and comedy in 2020

Star debuts and happy returns: theatre, dance and comedy in 2020

  This article titled “Star debuts and happy returns: theatre, dance and comedy in 2020” was written by Arifa Akbar, Lyndsey Winship and Brian Logan, for The Guardian on Thursday 2nd January 2020 09.00 UTC

Theatre Beckett Triple Bill

Trevor Nunn’s trio of short Beckett plays dwells on ageing and the unreliability of memory, kicking off with Krapp’s Last Tape starring James Hayes, followed by Eh…

[awesomerajeshahuja]

Star debuts and happy returns: theatre, dance and comedy in 2020

Star debuts and happy returns: theatre, dance and comedy in 2020

  This article titled “Star debuts and happy returns: theatre, dance and comedy in 2020” was written by Arifa Akbar, Lyndsey Winship and Brian Logan, for The Guardian on Thursday 2nd January 2020 09.00 UTC

Theatre Beckett Triple Bill

Trevor Nunn’s trio of short Beckett plays dwells on ageing and the unreliability of memory, kicking off with Krapp’s Last Tape starring James Hayes, followed by Eh…

[rajeshahuja]

Star debuts and happy returns: theatre, dance and comedy in 2020

Star debuts and happy returns: theatre, dance and comedy in 2020

  This article titled “Star debuts and happy returns: theatre, dance and comedy in 2020” was written by Arifa Akbar, Lyndsey Winship and Brian Logan, for The Guardian on Thursday 2nd January 2020 09.00 UTC

Theatre Beckett Triple Bill

Trevor Nunn’s trio of short Beckett plays dwells on ageing and the unreliability of memory, kicking off with Krapp’s Last Tape starring James Hayes, followed by Eh…

[slimlastforskolins]

How Are European Companies Dealing With The Racial Caricatures In Classic Ballets? – ArtsJournal

How Are European Companies Dealing With The Racial Caricatures In Classic Ballets? – ArtsJournal

DANCE Posted: November 22, 20198:01 am

American companies have been looking hard at this problem in the past few years, especially in the annual cash cow that is Nutcracker. With ballet becoming ever more internationalized — “a performance in Moscow can be beamed to a cinema in Massachusetts” — Lyndsey Winship has a look at how dancers and choreographers in London, Paris, Moscow, and Monte…

[earlrmerrill]

Dance Critic Judith Mackrell Is Leaving The Guardian; Lyndsey Winship Steps In

Mackrell: "Dance has been so very generous to me as a writer, and The Guardian such a fantastic platform, that I feel I'm walking away from my own dream job. But I've been doing it for 32 years (nine of them at The Independent before I joined The Guardian) and if it's time for me to focus on other projects it's also time to hand the mic to another voice."

Article source here:Arts Journal

[terpsichoremovementasmuse]

“With a new work inspired by Boyz n the Hood, Kyle Abraham tells Lyndsey Winship why artists like him can drive social change.”

[daretodanceblog]

🍃 "The crucial thing is to dream big and work hard. Because you are only as big as your dreams and how hard you work to make them a reality. If you set your expectations very low, that's all you're going to be. The minute you say, "I'm satisfied", you stop growing." - Carlos Acosta, from 'Being a Dancer' by Lyndsey Winship ✨ that's my inspiration this weekend! Like if you're feeling it! ✨ photo by @jakeowensphoto 📸 (at Kew Gardens)

[galina-ulanova]

She feels that she’s now in her prime, she tells me, through an interpreter. “I’m at the stage where you have experience and you have technique but at the same time you still have energy and strength.” It’s the short window of a dancer’s life where you’re just old enough and just young enough for technique, artistry and hunger to come together in a magical triumvirate.

Lyndsey Winship on Yekaterina Krysanova (Bolshoi Ballet, 2016)

[galina-ulanova]

In ballet, great works of literature are often just useful pegs to hang some dancing on.

Lyndsey Winship

[gramilano]

English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi and Francesco Gabriele Frola @ Dasa Wharton

It all looks gorgeous but British companies have fought shy of Le Corsaire for a reason. The silly tale of lecherous pashas and smiling slave girls calls for a wholehearted, honey-roast acting style seldom found west of the Dnieper and the degree of difficulty is set cruelly high with enough fouettés, barrel turns, chaînés and grandes pirouettes to stock a dance competition. ENB rises to the challenge superbly, getting its 70th anniversary year off to a cracking start. – Louise Levene, THE FINANCIAL TIMES

01 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Alison McWhinney @ Dasa Wharton

Erina Takahashi – Medora

Francesco Gabriele Frola – Conrad

Jeffrey Cirio – Ali

Shiori Kase – Gulnare

Brooklyn Mack – Lankendem

Erik Woolhouse – Birbanto

02 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Brooklyn Mack @ Dasa Wharton

03 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Shiori Kase @ Dasa Wharton

English National Ballet’s revival succeeds through sheer choreographic bravura. This is not dance as story or psychology, but dance as feat, as endurance, as a throwing down of the gauntlet. The men are more airborne than earthbound, the Olympian height of their leaps and turns augmented by astounding flourishes and combative kicks. And the women’s choreography is no less demanding. – Bidisha, THE OBSERVER

04 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Shiori Kase @ Dasa Wharton

05 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi and Michael Coleman @ Dasa Wharton

06 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi @ Dasa Wharton

In the programme notes that accompany the English National Ballet’s Le Corsaire, Artistic Director Tamara Rojo makes a plea for understanding from the audience for the rather unsavoury subject matter. For Le Corsaire features piracy, slavery and the suppression of women. Today, we would rightly call out such behaviour, but this is a 19th-century ballet with a distinct whiff of pantomime about it (there’s a Pascha who jiggles his large belly with glee) so you should not really take offence at the scantily-clad concubines or dashing pirates. Instead, the audience can enjoy a wonderful display of dancing in a gloriously colourful and lively production. The story, based on a poem by Lord Byron, verges on the ridiculous: there is a lot of kidnapping, sword waving and even a drug-induced dream sequence, but all this comes second to the dancing, which shows off the company at its very best. – Joy Sable, THE JEWISH CHRONICLE

07 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Jeffrey Cirio @ Dasa Wharton

08 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Francesco Gabriele Frola @ Dasa Wharton

There may have been new opportunities for younger dancers to shine in this revival, but it was a dancer who has been with ENB for a staggering 24 years (and doesn’t look a day older than when she became a principal in 2000) who led this opening night. It is tremendous that the hard-working, evergreen and still fabulous Erina Takahashi is now getting some of the recognition she truly deserves. In truth, she lost her way momentarily in the variation but from that point onwards, her dancing, as the heroine, Medora, was scintillating; so powerful in the coda and beautifully expressive throughout the ballet. As her love interest – the pirate chief, Conrad – Francesco Gabriele Frola brought more than a hint of Errol Flynn with his insouciant bravado and mighty leaps. As his servant, Ali, Jeffrey Cirio danced impeccably and excitingly in this most iconic of male solos – Graham Watts

09 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi @ Dasa Wharton

10 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi and Francesco Gabriele Frola @ Dasa Wharton

11 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Jeffrey Cirio @ Dasa Wharton

12 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Jeffrey Cirio @ Dasa Wharton

13 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Francesco Gabriele Frola @ Dasa Wharton

14 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Jeffrey Cirio @ Dasa Wharton

15 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Jeffrey Cirio @ Dasa Wharton

Perhaps because ballet as an art form is so unreal, it’s easy to accept the fantasy it presents on stage as separate from real-life concerns. Le Corsaire is essentially the story of female slaves being bought, sold and kidnapped for a randy pasha’s Ottoman harem, painted in the cliches of orientalist exotica – sparkling jewels, bra tops and acres of midriff. It sounds tasteless written down, but in the theatre the audience claps and laughs because it comes with dazzling beauty, great flights of virtuoso dancing, finely etched classical lines and a good dose of theatrical artifice. – Lyndsey Winship, THE GUARDIAN

16 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi and Francesco Gabriele Frola and Jeffrey Cirio @ Dasa Wharton

Erina Takahashi, leading the first cast, is lovely as Medora, the heroine who has to be rescued first from the slave trader Lankendem and then from the Pasha. Takahashi dances with strength and a nice smile, flirtatious when required and opening up her heart with gentle ardency when in the arms of her saviour, Conrad. In the latter role Francesco Gabriele Frola is a dashing pirate hero and a touching partner to Takahashi, while he brings a lyrical energy to his accomplished big moves. Shiori Kase’s dancing — vigorous and vivid — has the wow factor as Gulnare, the hapless slave girl for sale. Brooklyn Mack, as Lankendem, has a spring in his step and heaps of personality. Michael Coleman is the silliest of pashas, doddering around the stage with an enormous belly and generally hamming it up. In the role of the slave Ali, Jeffrey Cirio almost steals the show — his dancing whizzes by with an electrifying force and a spellbinding charisma. – Debra Craine, THE TIMES

17 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erik Woolhouse @ Dasa Wharton

18 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi and Francesco Gabriele Frola @ Dasa Wharton

19 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi and Francesco Gabriele Frola @ Dasa Wharton

20 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi and Francesco Gabriele Frola @ Dasa Wharton

The production was designed by Bob Ringwood who gives us gloriously colourful and glittering costumes coupled to similar settings ranging from a lively bazaar, the pirates’ cave stuffed with chests of jewels, and an elegantly appointed royal palace. And a shipwreck too. It really is a feast for the eyes… The women of the corps had their big moment in the jardin animé scene in act 3, where the dozy Pasha dreams of his women as a collection of exotic flowers. The women are in pale pastel tinted tutus, wielding huge garlands as Kase and Takahashi thread delicate solos through their midst. It’s another visually ravishing moment. – Lynette Halewood, DANCE TABS

21 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi and Francesco Gabriele Frola @ Dasa Wharton

22 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Erina Takahashi @ Dasa Wharton

23 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire @ Dasa Wharton

English National Ballet are the only UK company to perform this work in its entirety, and they’ve made it very much their own, showing off the artistry of a company that’s been going from strength to strength under Tamara Rojo’s directorship. – Teresa Guerreiro, CULTURE WHISPER

24 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Shiori Kase @ Dasa Wharton

25 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Shiori Kase @ Dasa Wharton

Less memorable is the orchestral score, a pot pourri of the work of 10 mostly very minor composers. But under the baton of Graham Sutherland it sets a cracking pace for the action. Plus it’s thrilling to hear such a full, unfettered blast from the pit. The brass section are having a field day. – Jenny Gilbert, THE ARTS DESK

26 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Francesco Gabriele Frola @ Dasa Wharton

27 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire with Francesco Gabriele Frola @ Dasa Wharton

It’s glorious, unabashed fun. Le Corsaire may be loosely based on the Byron poem but you won’t find any brooding romantic types here — instead a swaggering, bravura spectacle. – Emma Byrne, EVENING STANDARD

28 English National Ballet in Le Corsaire @ Dasa Wharton

Photo Album: English National Ballet in Le Corsaire It all looks gorgeous but British companies have fought shy of Le Corsaire for a reason. The silly tale of lecherous pashas and smiling slave girls calls for a wholehearted, honey-roast acting style seldom found west of the Dnieper and the degree of difficulty is set cruelly high with enough fouettés, barrel turns, chaînés and grandes pirouettes to stock a dance competition.