Nina Ananiashvili and the State Ballet of Georgia are offering a full-year internship for male and female dancers for the 2012–2013 season. The internship will include accommodation. Shortlisted dancers will participate in all performances undertaken by the company, with further possibility of a full-time contract.

Aspects of The Royal Ballet are featured in the April issue of the magazine. On page 15, Zoë Anderson talks to principal dancer Steven McRae, who won the Dancing Times Best Male Dancer Award at the recent Critics’ Circle Dance Awards; Margaret Willis meets Royal Ballet soloist Akane Takada for our Dancer of the Month interview on page 85; Lynn Seymour offers typically forthright opinions on the company in her “Notes for the future” on page 35, and in Dance Matters we reveal the company’s plans for the 2012/13 season, its first under the direction of Kevin O’Hare.

Jonathan Gray journeyed to Tbilisi in Georgia, to see the celebrations marking Nina Ananiashvili’s 30 years on stage. Here, he offers a personal tribute to a great ballerina

 

Not so very long ago, it was not unusual for a ballerina’s career to last well into her forties and beyond – just think of some of the great names from the past, like Anna Pavlova, Galina Ulanova, Margot Fonteyn, Maya Plisetskaya, Antoinette Sibley or Lynn Seymour.