Birmingham Royal Ballet - Nutcracker Sweeties CD

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Birmingham Royal Ballet - Nutcracker Sweeties:
Nutcracker Sweeties is Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington's big band tribute to Tchaikovsky's classic ballet score, full of humour, irony, swing and blues. This production by Birmingham Royal Ballet, with choreography by David Bintley, is set in Broadway and America in the 1940's. It is a joyous parade of pom-pom girls, drum majorettes, GI's, sailors and Candy Kane. In a succession of wonderful costumes by Jasper Conran, with a background of flashing neon sets, the dancers present a catwalk of jazz styles. It's imaginative, funny, colourful and completely irresistible.

The Royal Ballet - The Judas Tree:
Kenneth MacMillan choreographed his last ballet, The Judas Tree, for Irek Mukhamedov, who takes the lead in this striking production.

A vampish woman turns up on a building site in dockland wastes, and causes an explosive reaction amongst a group of thirteen workmen, led by their Foreman. In the heated confusion, only one man responds with tenderness. Gradually, the dark underside of male sexuality is exposed and the power of peer pressure takes over. The ballet spirals into a climax of betrayal, loss and terror.