And she knew the right photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, who immortalised her as the ultimate poetic rock'n'roll androgyne: part Baudelaire, part Dylan, part Sinatra, huge part Keith She rocked. She occasionally rhymed.The Rolling Stones' European tour begins on Tuesday in Milan; the Stones play Twickenham Stadium on 20 and 22 August. For more information: www.rollingstones . H istorical reconstructions have traditionally been associated with the doges and dulcians of the Renaissance.
Could this be about to change? Earlier this year, BBC2's Riot at the Rite recreated the notorious 1913 Paris premiere of Stravinsky's ballet. This week, the 1912 Berlin premiere of Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire was recreated live by director Mike Ashman, mezzo-soprano Sally Burgess, and the Almeida Ensemble. Clearly, German theatre-goers were more open-minded than French balletomanes, for when Albertine Zehme first performed Pierrot lunaire, she went on to tour 11 cities. At the Almeida, just one performance was scheduled, though a more arresting impersonation than Burgess's is difficult to imagine. With Tim Payne (clarinet), Andrew Ball (piano), Miranda Fulleylove (violin/viola), Sophie Harris (cello), and Nancy Ruffer (flute) playing behind a screen, according to Schoenberg's original directions, Burgess conjured the necrotic fantasies of Albert Giraud's moonstruck clown with a disc of light and a single chair as her only props. One of Britain's greatest dancers, Anton Dolin, wrote a long article entitled "What I did not like about the Bolshoi". Apart from the unmentioned fact that it was competition for his own Festival Ballet company, he seemed mainly to think it inelegant compared with the Diaghilev Ballet of his youth.
We might quarrel with the story and music of the other unfamiliar work, The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, but the performances it held were terrific. As a bonus, the company stayed on to give three evenings of virtuoso extracts at the Davis Theatre, Croydon, and to film part of that show and Giselle (the resulting movie would be well worth reissuing on DVD) Not everybody here agreed about the Bolshoi's excellence. Their Romeo and Juliet was a revelation and would remain arguably the best of all, particularly as danced then; it was certainly the most influential too. Besides, the important point was that the whole company showed the same qualities of integrity and conviction. In Swan Lake you could pick, at random, anyone from the corps de ballet of swans, and know that she would give a beautiful performance. What elegantly vivid use everyone made of their arms: that's something Dame Marie Rambert singled out as worth aiming for by British companies. And the character dancers - you never saw such totally satisfying accounts of a czardas or mazurka, nor such ideal playing of parents or servants, courtiers or jesters.
