sat 13/09/2025

dance

Pina Bausch's Rite of Spring, English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells

Hanna Weibye

Is English National Ballet's current predilection for acquiring European repertoire some kind of anti-Brexit statement, or just smart brand positioning?

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Crystal Pite, Flight Pattern, Royal Ballet

Hanna Weibye

Can thirty minutes of contemporary ballet say something meaningful about the modern refugee crisis? It has been the surprise of the season to find myself asking this question not once, but twice, at the Royal Ballet.

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Project Polunin, Sadler's Wells

Katie Colombus

This is the comeback after the comeback-that-never-was. It's the anticipated full stage ballet after the hugely popular Youtube video. It's the press waiting to see if ballet's bad boy will do something wild. It's the fans waiting to see if Sergei Polunin really will be the second coming (he's often hailed as the modern day Nureyev). Pamela Anderson is in the audience.

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Tree of Codes, Wayne McGregor, Sadler's Wells

Katie Colombus

Tree of Codes is a work made from a work made from a work.

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FLA.CO.MEN, Israel Galván, Sadler's Wells

Hanna Weibye

Before this Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival-opening performance of Israel Galván's show FLA.CO.MEN, my guest wanted to know what the show would be like.

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Masurca Fogo, Pina Bausch, Sadler's Wells

Hanna Weibye

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch are at an interesting juncture. Eight years after their eponymous founder died, and over 40 since she took over at Wuppertal, the troupe is reaching a point when, even if Bausch were alive, it would be facing change, as the older dancers in the company - many of whom have been there since the beginning - enter their late 60s.

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Giselle, English National Ballet, London Coliseum

Hanna Weibye

In the annals of ballet directors, always searching for the perfect balance between heritage programming and new work, there can rarely have been a double whammy so successful.

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Best of 2016: Dance & Ballet

Hanna Weibye

The criteria used by theartsdesk's critics in selecting pieces for this list are simple, but demanding: did a piece or a programme stir and shake us? Did it move us, and make us still - weeks or months afterwards - think, yes, I'd go see that again in a heartbeat?

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Strictly Come Dancing 2016 Final, BBC One

Jasper Rees

What is light entertainment for? It won’t save the world or heal the sick or bring warring factions to the negotiating table. It’s teeth and smiles and bread and circuses on a Saturday night and it shouldn’t have to bear any greater weight. The Generation Game was never required to offer vital balm during the Three-Day Week. Barrymore didn’t nurse us all through Black Wednesday and Britain’s exit from the ERM.

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The Red Shoes, Sadler's Wells

Jenny Gilbert

Anyone expecting a knockout punch from Matthew Bourne’s latest creation is in for a let-down. His hotly anticipated take on Powell and Pressburger’s 1948 film, unlike his Swan Lake, is not going to send anyone out into the night weeping into their hankie. Nor is it likely to turn unbelievers into ballet fans, and yet it is probably his best piece of work to date.

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