Romeo & Juliet, Manchester
Rudolf Nureyev choreographed Romeo And Juliet for English National Ballet (ENB) back in 1977, when the company was still known as London Festival Ballet. Like Kenneth MacMillan’s better-known 1965 production, Nureyev’s version is set to the classic Prokofiev score. But Nureyev took a different line from MacMillan’s psychological approach, focusing on the headlong energies of love, lust and hatred at the centre of Shakespeare’s tragedy. For this year’s revival, ENB has cast some of its brightest young talents, with debuts including Isaac Hernandez and Laurretta Summerscales.
Nora Invites… London
Eleanor Sikorski and Flora Wellesley Wesley are the two dancers who make up Nora, and for their London debut they’ve commissioned works from very different choreographic sources. Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion have devised Eleanor And Flora Music, which reinvents Burrows and Fargion’s droll and intricate 2002 piece Both Sitting Duet, conjuring a score of silent music from the dancers’ movements. French choreographer Simon Tanguy paints a portrait in text and dance of the women and their world. A third work, Bloody Nora, by Liz Agiss, completes the programme.
