Strictly Gershwin

Last Friday, I went to see the English National Ballet’s Strictly Gershwin at the London Coliseum.  It was a Christmas present for my mum, and it was as wonderful as we hoped it would be.

I love going to the ballet – I first went to see The Nutcracker as a seven year old with my Mum and my grandmother and was completely entranced by the music, and the dresses, and the dancing and the magic taking place on stage.

Strictly Gershwin included a number of different performances, each to a different piece of Gershwin’s music. In addition to a beautiful, traditional piece of ballet, performed to Rhapsody in Blue (one of my highlights), there was a lovely piece danced to ‘Shall We Dance’ which looked as though it had been lifted straight out of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. There were awe-inspiring tap-dancing pieces, an amazing Argentine Tango-esq performance to It Ain’t Necessarily So and a breathtakingly beautiful dance to Summertime. The orchestra was on stage as well, rather than in the pit, which meant you could engage more with the music and the conductor, and there were also singers involved.

The whole evening was amazing – but my absolute favourite piece was the An American in Paris performance. An American in Paris is one of my all time favourite movies – Gene Kelly is amazing and I love the ballet scene at the end. This performance was essentially the scene from the movie; there was so much movement and so  many things happening on stage, the spirit of the film and of Paris was beautifully invoked and well.... it was just perfect.

So, all in all, a lovely evening out – I would definitely recommend Strictly Gershwin to anyone, and I would love to see it again! I had hoped there would be a DVD of it but alas, there appears not to be. So I will have to content myself with getting out my Gershwin CD and enjoying the wonderful music.