dance
Radio & Juliet/Faun/McGregor + Mugler, London Coliseum review - a fashion faux pasTuesday, 10 December 2019
A pas de deux is normally an opportunity for two dancers to express the pinnacle of their skill and the choreographer's art. In the case of McGregor + Mugler, the duet receiving its world premiere as part of a Russian-sponsored triple bill, it became an opportunity for a big-name designer to strut his stuff. Read more... |
Svetlana Zakharova, Modanse, London Coliseum review - impeccably chic but soul-lessThursday, 05 December 2019
What price a pair of seats at the ballet? If you’re talking the latest starry Russian import then, with a few perks thrown in, you might not see much change from £800. Read more... |
Coppélia, Royal Ballet review - a real charmerWednesday, 04 December 2019
In featuring ordinary people and things rather than magic curses or avenging ghosts, Coppélia stands apart in the canon of 19th century ballets. The only mystery about this delightful old production is why the Royal Ballet has not programmed it for more than a decade. Read more... |
Acosta Danza, Sadler's Wells review - a dose of Cuban sunThursday, 21 November 2019
Second album, second novel, second tour programme – the follow-up is always tricky. But the timing couldn’t be better for Acosta Danza, the Havana-based dance company which made its UK debut in 2017. These 20 young Cubans, handpicked by Carlos Acosta and bursting with talent, can’t know how badly the UK needs a shot of their sunny optimism right now. Read more... |
Natalia Osipova: Pure Dance, Sadler's Wells review - a great ballerina branches out, againFriday, 25 October 2019
Sometimes a dance talent arrives that causes the ground to shift and alters the landscape. Natalia Osipova is one such. Not content to be queen of all she surveys at the Royal Ballet, she is hungry for new territory. Read more... |
Concerto/Enigma Variations/Raymonda Act III, Royal Ballet review - time to cheer the corps de balletWednesday, 23 October 2019
As a mood-lifter, it’s hard to beat the opening of Concerto. Against a primrose sky, figures in daffodil, tangerine and brick form lozenges of fizzing colour, foregrounded by a leading couple so buoyant their heels barely ever touch down. Read more... |
Cross Currents/Monotones II/Everyone Keeps Me, Linbury Theatre review - the Royal Ballet finds the missing linkTuesday, 15 October 2019
This programme of three short works is all about influence, specifically the supposed cross currents between ballet and contemporary dance in the latter half of the 20th century. Read more... |
Dada Masilo's Giselle, Sadler's Wells review - bold, brutal, unforgivingTuesday, 08 October 2019
The most arresting thing about Dada Masilo’s contemporary South African take on Giselle is Masilo herself. Tiny and boyishly slight, she inhabits her own fast, fidgety, tribal-inspired choreography with the intensity of someone in a trance. Read more... |
Manon, Royal Opera House review - splendid start to the seasonThursday, 03 October 2019
The Royal Ballet’s choice of season opener could be dismissed as safe and predictable. But as the glorious naturalistic detail of 1830s Paris unfolds in Kenneth MacMillan’s 1974 retelling, you see the reasoning. It’s only a year since the Royal Opera House remodelled its ground floor spaces to be more welcoming, and Manon is the ideal first-time ballet. Read more... |
Redd, Barbican Theatre review - hip hop gets the bluesWednesday, 02 October 2019
There was a time when hip hop in a theatre was all about showing off. It was about dancers spinning on their head or their elbow so fast and for so long that the audience gaped in disbelief. Although it had long ago migrated from the concrete stairwells of inner city estates, the culture remained rooted in the idea of a battle, a dance-off, a show of virtuosity. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Second Best, Riverside Studios review - Asa Butterfield brin...
Your response to Barney Norris’s one-...
theartsdesk Radio Show 36 - legendary producer Joe Boyd disc...
The latest in Peter Culshaw’s peripatetic radio...
Mrs President, Charing Cross Theatre review - Mary Todd Linc...
The phenomenal global success of Six began when two young writers decided to give voices to the wives of a...
Album: Biig Piig - 11:11
Is there such a thing as a boundary between pop and alternative any more? The presence of strange characters like Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish and...
Onegin, Royal Ballet review - a poignant lesson about the pe...
It would be hard to find an antihero more anti than Eugene Onegin. The protagonist of Alexander Pushkin’s long verse novel of 1833 is a wrecker of...
… Blackbird Hour, Bush Theatre review - an unrelentingly tou...
In a world tainted with racism and homophobia, the ...
Blu-ray: Stray Dog
Kurosawa’s 1949 thriller probes post-war morality in a Tokyo whose ruins and US occupation mostly remain just out of shot, in a heatwave causing...
Nakariakov, SCO, Emelyanychev, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh...
What a delight to see an almost full Queen’s Hall for a programme solely of...
Vietnam: The War That Changed America, Apple TV+ review - pa...
It’s been 50 years since the USA bowed to the inevitable and pulled out of Vietnam, in the midst of harrowing scenes of anguish and chaos. Apple’s...