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Watch a short solo from Birmingham Royal Ballet performed by a dancer and two musicians in their own homes
• Hottest front-room seats: the best theatre and dance to watch online
The dancing lasts less than three minutes, but it’s just the fillip we need right now; a gem of a moment to pull focus in often otherwise blurry days. The Swan is a lockdown offering from Birmingham Royal Ballet. Relayed in split-screen, a pianist (Jonathan Higgins), cellist (António Novais) and dancer (Céline Gittens) – all in their separate homes – perform Mikhail Fokine’s The Dying Swan, with a surprise ending.
The short solo, set to Saint-Saëns’ Le Cygne, was created in 1905 for the legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova, and it captures the ephemeral otherworldliness of the ballerina’s art, as well as ballet’s enduring image of the fluttering, beautifully doomed white swan. Continue reading...