Playground theatre, London
The extraordinary life story of the Ballets Russes star is retold with intensity, imagination and balletic flourishes
Did you know Ravel’s Bolero was originally called Fandango? And it was written as a ballet commissioned by Ida Rubinstein, a dancer with the Ballets Russes, actor, patron, producer, nurse and apparently one-time nun.
Her colourful story is full of historical nuggets and telling it is clearly a passion project for the woman who plays her, Naomi Sorkin, who bears some resemblance to Rubinstein and shares her Russian Jewish roots. Sorkin is a woman with the unmistakable bearing of a former ballerina and has her own eventful career, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre in the late 60s/early 70s, later performing with Lindsay Kemp and William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt.