... Natalia Makarova NATALIA MAKAROVA's guest appearance with the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden on December 19 included her debut here in a modern work, MacMillan's Concerto, in addition to the more familiar Don Quixote pas de deux. In this latter work she was part nered securely by a somewhat subdued David Wall, though his masculine sturdiness complemented her brasher style. She is ...

... Jenner and Coleman CHRISTMAS is an appropriate time to present Ashton's La Fille mal gardee for, despite its high summer atmosphere, it has a festive quality of enjoyment which appeals to ballet audiences of all levels of experience. At the Covent Garden per formance on December 28 the cast was headed by Ann Jenner and Michael Coleman, an un forced and well-matched pair of happy lovers as ...

... 'Nutcracker' lack of style FURTHER VISITS to London Festival Ballet's production of The Nutcracker at the Royal Festival Hall prompt me to ask why this commercially successful presentation should at the same time be so unsatisfactory from an artistic point. In the main the dancers are hard-working and proficient, seemingly interested in their work in spite of two- and-a-half weeks of ...

... Benefit A BENEFIT performance of The Rocky Horror Show will be given at 11.30 p.m. on January 23 at the King's Road Theatre in aid of Roy Truman. A board operator for the show, he was injured recently when a maroon blew up in his face, fusing him to lose an eye and impairing his hearing. Seats are priced from £2.50 downwards. ...

... SELDOM-SEEN OPERAS AT CAMDEN AS IN previous years, a feature of the Camden Festival 1974 will be productions of seldom- seen operas. On February 20 at the Collegiate, Opera da Camera will present the first perfor mance in this country of The Comedy of Errors by Stephen Storace, in an English transla tion by Arthur Jacobs with music edited by Richard Piatt. In the cast are Marie Hayward, ...

... Northern Dance PIERS BEAUMONT has dug out a treasure from nineteenth century ballet, Bournonville's charming Flower Festival at Genzano. Mr Beaumont has reproduced the Divertissement of this 115-year-old work, and designed colourful costumes for the eight members of the Northern Dance i neatre wno presented it for the first time in their New Year programme at the Royal Northern College of ...

... Genee award THE ANNUAL Award Performance for young dancers competing for the Adeline Genge Gold Medal was held this year at Sadler's Wells Theatre on the afternoon of January 4. This important award, instituted in 1930 by Dame Adeline, Founder-President of the Royal Academy of Dancing, was given a new approach last year so that potential talent can be sought at an earlier age. The npu; m lino ...

... Nureyev version THE ROYAL BALLET danced farewell to Christmas on January 21 with the last performance this season of .Nureyev's version of The Nutcracker, a particularly successful production that deserves further revival at the end of the year. Merle Park's childlike glee as Clara, her mechanical exacti tude as the puppet doll and sheer beauty of movement and grandeur as the dream ...

... A living Giselle OF THE MAJOR classical ballets in the normal repertoire, 'Giselle makes the most demands on the interpretative skills of the leading dancer, requiring her to dance the first act in a manner suggesting shyness, trust, simple joy and finally mental oreaKaown, while the second act demands an other-worldliness, but showing the last vestige of human feeling before it is sapped ...

... Israeli history EDINBURGH Pool Lunch Hour, Theatre are celebrating their third birthday with a brisk production of The Moshe Dayan Extravaganza by Michael Almaz, associate director of the Pool. The cast of three, Irene Sunters, Tutte Lemkow and the Pool's own director, Phil Emanuel, take the audience on a guided tour of Israeli history from the time of Abraham to the present day. To compress ...

... 'Rib' that irritates WHEN A NEW theatre company is founded with the avowed aim of staging the works of one particular dramatist, it is natural to expect great things of playwright, director and cast. Alas, the first presentation of the New Company at the Act Inn on February 5 Rib by Tim Rose Price amounts to an evening of im mense irritation. The irritation is largely because it all ...

... Hyde Park THE QUALITY of performance put together by the new Joint Stock Theatre Group in The Speakers, now in the middle of a short tour is high enough to make one anxious to see them work with material of more dramatic substance. Based on a book by Heath cote Williams which mixes documentary with fiction in an account of public utterances and private lives in the shadowy world of Hyde ...