dance
Four Quartets, Barbican Theatre review - ultimate stage poetryFriday, 24 May 2019
The first surprise is that this hasn’t been done before. The poems that comprise TS Eliot’s Four Quartets are so embedded with references to dance that presenting them alongside choreography feels inevitable. Read more... |
Tribe//Still I Rise, Brighton Festival 2019 review - an evening of poetic movementWednesday, 22 May 2019
Maya Angelou’s iconic poem Still I Rise is a good starting point for many things in life. But it’s a particularly good beginning for a piece of contemporary dance choreography, and Victoria Fox has done a great job of bringing the poet’s words to life. It’s a rigidly structured one hour work – definite sections of movement working to a contained pace and spacing, split up by sections of music ranging from intense strings and solo opera voice to upbeat club music. Read more... |
Within the Golden Hour/Medusa/Flight Pattern, Royal Ballet review - the company shows its contemporary faceFriday, 10 May 2019
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has come a long way since his early days as a hip hop artist, but the outsider status is obvious even before the curtain goes up on Medusa, his first commission for the Royal Ballet and the centrepiece of a triple bill showcasing the company’s contemporary side. Read more... |
Mitten wir im Leben sind, De Keersmaeker, Queyras, Rosas, Sadler's Wells review - Bach-worthy geniusThursday, 25 April 2019
All Bach is dance, a teacher once told me. The justifiable exaggeration switched on a light; leaping to the Brandenburg Concertos followed. This great work of kinetic art is of a different order. Read more... |
She Persisted, English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells review - a must-see triple billSaturday, 06 April 2019
She does indeed persist, that remarkable Tamara Rojo. Dismayed by the fact that, in 20 years as a dancer, she had never performed a ballet made by a woman, she mounted a triple bill called She Said, featuring only work by and about women. Read more... |
Victoria, Northern Ballet, Sadler's Wells - A queen re-instated, once againThursday, 28 March 2019
Given that the life of Queen Victoria spanned the best part of a century, the first task for any biographer is to hack a path through the mountain of facts. It ought to help that the queen was a prolific diarist. Too bad for choreographer Cathy Marston that Victoria’s youngest daughter got there first. Read more... |
The Thread, Russell Maliphant & Vangelis, Sadler’s Wells review – an inspiring marriage of old and newMonday, 18 March 2019
In The Thread Russell Maliphant attempts what, at first sight, appears a foolhardy project – the juxtaposition of contemporary and traditional Greek dance. The two genres seem poles apart, the one being collective and in unison, the other more individualistic and expressive. Read more... |
Bon Voyage, Bob, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's Wells review - interminable ennuiTuesday, 26 February 2019
It's a decade since Pina Bausch sadly died, and during that time her company has kept her memory alive by revisiting her amazingly rich legacy. Inevitably, though, the time would come for them to embark on a new phase; but how? Read more... |
The Rite of Spring/Gianni Schicchi, Opera North review - unlikely but musically satisfying pairingSunday, 17 February 2019
Stravinsky acknowledged that his orchestra for The Rite of Spring was a large one because Diaghilev had promised him extra musicians (“I am not sure that my orchestra would have been as huge otherwise.”) It isn’t huge in Opera North’s production (★★★★★), and for practical reasons they're using the edition arranged by Jonathan McPhee in 1988 for a standard pit band. Read more... |
Swan Lake, English National Ballet, London Coliseum review - a solid, go-to productionFriday, 04 January 2019
Diversity, and the need for more of it, is a hot potato in the theatre arts. Kudos, then, to English National Ballet and its director Tamara Rojo for the 23 nationalities represented within its ranks. 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...
Catherine Airey: Confessions review - the crossroads we bear
Anglo-Irish author Catherine Airey’s first novel, ...
theartsdesk on Vinyl 88: Violent Femmes, Ringo Starr, ARXX,...
VINYL OF THE MONTH
Buñuel Mansuetude (Skin Graft/Overdrive)
...
RAM Song Circle, Wigmore Hall review - excellent young music...
After a week of illness, heading out into the Sunday afternoon cold and rain was not something I was overjoyed to undertake. But in the event this...
Album: Gary Kemp - This Destination
If I’d listened to this blind, I would have absolutely no idea who it was by. This isn’t the voice I remember...
Music Reissues Weekly: New York Dolls - Showdown At The Merc...
“A band you’re gonna like, whether you like it or not.” The proclamation in the press ads for the New York Dolls’ debut album acknowledged they...
Flight Risk review - the sky's the limit for Michelle D...
Director Mel Gibson probably made Flight...
Presence review - Soderbergh's haunted camera
The camera is the ghost in Steven Soderbergh’s 35th feature, waiting in a vacant house for its buyers, ambitious Rebecca (Lucy Liu, ...
Cymbeline, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - pagan women figh...
There’s not much point in having three hours worth of Shakespearean text to craft and the gorgeous Sam Wanamaker Playhouse as a...
An Interrogation, Hampstead Theatre review - police procedur...
In a dingy room with dilapidated furniture on a dismal Sunday evening, two detectives prepare for an interview. The old hand walks...