Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling is a ballet of doomed obsession. The hero is a prince, but this historical drama couldn’t be further from fairytale: it follows Rudolf, heir to the Austro-Hungarian ...

Principal Ryoichi Hirano makes us care deeply for the tragedy's titanically flawed anti-hero Mark has been watching live dance since he was four years old and reviewing it for 20. To him, it is the ...

So I’ll begin with Polunin: though it will be impossible to do justice to what he showed us on stage. He started his journey as a troubled young man from the very beginning: after the arrogance of the ...

Scottish Ballet are restaging Kenneth MacMillan's 1978 masterpiece – but what really happened between the ill-fated couple who inspired it? Saul David is a bestselling historian and broadcaster. His ...

However, the question is whether Sun readers, and I, enjoyed ourselves, and judging from the uninhibited curtain applause I am sure we did, and some of us were in severe snivels by the end. One of the ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. In 1978 the British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, determined to drag ballet out of fairyland, gave Covent ...

Last July, Moscow ballet goers were almost completely taken by surprise at the appearance on the stage of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater of Ukrainian-born Sergei Polunin, ...

Kenneth MacMillan’s bleak psychological period piece is a gift for the Royal Ballet’s dancers, who take turns in performances of gripping, in-the-moment power When Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling was ...

Death, desire and desperation drive a ballet that delves into the darkness of human emotion Opening the Royal Ballet’s new season, Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling is an uncompromising tale of death and ...

Mayerling, Kenneth MacMillan's dark tale of dangerous obsession, returns to the Royal Opera House to open The Royal Ballet's 2022/23 season. Based on the true story of the murder-suicide scandal that ...