One sunny afternoon, during a garden party, young Alice sees with surprise how the writer Lewis Carroll, a friend of her parents, unusually turns into a white rabbit, and immediately feels the irrepressible desire to follow him into a magical rabbit hole.
The Dream: Frederick Ashton’s delightful interpretation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a classic of The Royal Ballet’s repertory. Symphonic Variations: Ashton was inspired to create a ballet on the four seasons – but as he began to choreograph he refined and purified until the ballet shook off its original meaning, emerging as an abstract celebration of movement and physicality. Marguerite and Armand: Marguerite, a Parisian courtesan, lies on her deathbed. She recalls her tragic love affair with Armand in a series of feverish flashbacks.
The Royal Ballet celebrates the centenary of Leonard Bernsteins birth with this all-Bernstein collection. The Companys three associate choreographers respond to the varied styles of Bernsteins music in ballets that are lyrical, beautiful, exuberant and moving. Wayne McGregors Yugen is set to Chichester Psalms. In The Age of Anxiety Liam Scarlett responds to Bernsteins eclectic Second Symphony, itself a response to W.H. Auden's poem. Corybantic Games by Christopher Wheeldon responds to the Serenade after Platos Symposium.
