sat 26/04/2025

dance

Acosta Danza, Sadler's Wells review - a dose of Cuban sun

Jenny Gilbert

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.

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Natalia Osipova: Pure Dance, Sadler's Wells review - a great ballerina branches out, again

Jenny Gilbert

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.

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Concerto/Enigma Variations/Raymonda Act III, Royal Ballet review - time to cheer the corps de ballet

Jenny Gilbert

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.

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Cross Currents/Monotones II/Everyone Keeps Me, Linbury Theatre review - the Royal Ballet finds the missing link

Jenny Gilbert

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.

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Dada Masilo's Giselle, Sadler's Wells review - bold, brutal, unforgiving

Jenny Gilbert

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.

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Manon, Royal Opera House review - splendid start to the season

Jenny Gilbert

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.

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Redd, Barbican Theatre review - hip hop gets the blues

Jenny Gilbert

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.

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Alvin Ailey, Programme C review - black, beautiful, brilliant

Jenny Gilbert

The Ailey company is that rare thing – a dance legend that’s even better than you remember.

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Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Sadler's Wells review - Still more Revelations

Jenny Gilbert

There is no equivalent of the Ailey phenomenon. This is a modern dance company with a New York square named after it. It’s a dance company that has performed at the inauguration of two presidents.

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Matthew Bourne's Romeo and Juliet, Sadler's Wells review - heart-stopping drama

Hanna Weibye

Your first thought on hearing there's a new Matthew Bourne Romeo and Juliet might well be 'doesn't it exist already?' So obvious does this marriage of high drama, lush iconic score, and Britain's premier dance maker seem that you might well be forgiven for assuming it had happened years...

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