Cordial celebration for a hundred years of entente
For centuries Britain and France fought each other from Hastings to Waterloo. But the Entente Cordiale, a pact sealed between the old enemies, buried their grievances and their colonial and continental rivalry in 1904.
Now the Royal Ballet is to mark the anniversary of the treaty signed by Edward VII with a gala concert in Paris with President Chirac and a senior British politician in attendance. Stars from the Royal Ballet of Covent Garden and the Corps de Ballet of the Ballet de l’Opera will join forces for the Soirée de l’Entente Cordiale on September 29 at the Palais Garnier, the opera house built by Napoleon III and opened in 1875.
It will be a poignant return home for the French ballet legend Sylvie Guillem, a principal guest artist for the Royal Ballet. She danced at the Paris Opera house for five years in the 1980s under the personal guidance of Rudolf Nureyev.
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Guillem, 39, had to cancel her season at the Royal Opera House after straining a tendon in her left ankle this month. The Royal Opera House confirmed that the injury was not serious and after a few weeks rest she will be back on the Paris stage where she made her name.
The elegant Darcey Bussell, another principal dancer at Covent Garden, will also take part, along with Sir Anthony Dowell, the former artistic director of the Royal Ballet. The evening will include a selection of short works by the great British choreographer Frederick Ashton; the showy favourite Etudes, by Harold Lander, and a work by the celebrated American choreographer Jerome Robbins.
Paris could not be a more appropriate venue for the gala performance. Edward VII cemented the Anglo-French friendship during a visit to Paris in 1903, when he entertained an actress, went racing at Longchamps and, by the time he left, had the crowd shouting “Vive l’Edouard!”
A little off-road thinking
KIM HOWELLS, the former Culture Minister now saddled with responsibility for the railways, has been asked by Glamorgan University to nominate his favourite thinker. While other Welsh politicians went for Nelson Mandela or Charles Darwin, he chose a late drug-addled American author. “My main motivation to continue studying after school was a combination of influences and emotions, but I would probably go for Jack Kerouac, whose novel On The Road made a Penywaun teenager ache to experience the great world and its art beyond the confines of the Cynon Valley.”
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Portrait of an icon
THE journalist and author Rosalind Coward has taken on an unlikely subject for her new book Diana: The Portrait, which explores the humanitarian work of the late Princess of Wales. It will be published next week to mark the seventh anniversary of her death.
Coward is better known for her writings on feminist icons such as Germaine Greer, rather than fashion icons. The book contains a foreword by Nelson Mandela.
Flower power
YET another victory, albeit unheralded, for Team GB in Athens. The return of the winners’ garlands was the idea of the former sports minister Tony Banks. “Presenting bunches of flowers . . . often looks rather limp,” he wrote to the organising committee. “Have you considered restoring the victors’ garland?” Banks said: “I’m glad someone likes my ideas.”
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Comedy as a black and white issue
THE Egyptian-American comic Ahmed Ahmed has won the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s first Richard Pryor award for members of the ethnic minorities. Pryor, who had multiple sclerosis diagnosed in 1986, was unable to attend. Praising the winner from his California home, he said: “He makes people confront their racism and small minds. I see genius in this man.” The organisers of the award were dismayed at how few comics were eligible: only 16 out of the 400 comedy shows at the Fringe. Pryor added: “You are all too white over there!”
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