dance

Apollo/ A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House

Ismene Brown Monday, 11 August 2014

The ballerina claque wars that generally accompany visits here by the Mariinsky Ballet are raging particularly feverishly this year, but it all falls silent when Uliana Lopatkina makes one of her increasingly rare appearances. So much noise is focused on legginess or hip flexibility of these size-zero ballerinas, and yet the Mariinsky knows more than any other company in history that it is not body but mind that matters in the final analysis.

Solo for Two, Osipova/Vasiliev, London Coliseum

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 07 August 2014

Mounting a contemporary dance show together doesn’t seem like the best way to get over your ex, even if you are (or rather, were) ballet’s most fabulously marketable couple.

Swan Lake, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House

Hanna Weibye Sunday, 03 August 2014

For a dance company, the always delicate balance between preserving your heritage and creating an exciting future becomes especially hard to negotiate when you are the most venerable institution in your field. The Mariinsky Ballet, now on tour in London, have this problem magnified by a general perception (theirs and the public’s) that they are the world’s keepers of the great Russian ballet tradition, which they are expected to represent at its finest.

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Fallen/Serpent, BalletBoyz, Roundhouse

Hanna Weibye Friday, 01 August 2014

School’s out for summer, even Parliament is on recess, and the streets around my house are suddenly devoid of children, as families make for the hills (or at least the beach).

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PUSH, Guillem/Maliphant, London Coliseum

Hanna Weibye Wednesday, 30 July 2014

Last night’s performance of PUSH at the London Colisem left me exhilarated and downcast in equal measure. Exhilarated because dancer Sylvie Guillem, dancer/choreographer Russell Maliphant and lighting genius Michael Hulls together create the Holy Grail of dance, a blend of intelligence, talent and charisma so stunning and convincing that it seems to trascend description and become sacramental.

Romeo and Juliet, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House

Hanna Weibye Tuesday, 29 July 2014

One of the reasons I always tell ballet sceptics to give Romeo and Juliet a go is that any production with halfway decent lovers and a vaguely competent rendition of Prokofiev’s score should convince them that this art form isn’t just about swans and sugar plums.

Restless Creature, Wendy Whelan, Linbury Studio Theatre

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 24 July 2014

If you’ve reached the top of your profession and then spent twenty years there, retiring is going to be hard. It will be many times harder if, like New York City Ballet principal Wendy Whelan, you were only twenty-four when you reached that rank, and only in your mid-forties when injuries came calling and roles started to fall away - unwelcome signs that the end of a classical ballet career is nigh.

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Coppélia, English National Ballet, London Coliseum

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 24 July 2014

For all it’s a balmy July here, the litany of appalling news from the world’s conflict zones will have left many of us feeling less than summery at heart. In that frame of mind, you might wonder whether Coppélia, English National Ballet’s latest production, is quite what you want to see. We are speaking, after all, of a frothy 19th-century comic ballet, full of charading silliness, populated by unfeasibly cheerful peasants, and ending happily with the all-too-predictable wedding.

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theartsdesk in Paris: San Francisco Ballet 2

Hanna Weibye Friday, 18 July 2014

Having a strong company style is usually no bad thing, especially if – as with San Francisco Ballet – the main component of it is a commitment to excellence. It has been impressive watching the gritty energy with which, night after night, the American visitors to Paris dish up meaty triple bills (most pieces coming in at 35 minutes or longer) and serve them with éclat.

theartsdesk in Paris: San Francisco Ballet 1

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 17 July 2014

In 2005, San Francisco Ballet were the first company to visit Paris as part of a new summer dance festival, Les Étés de la Danse. Helped not only by this auspicious start, but by the obvious demand for live dance in a month traditionally barren for the Parisian performing arts, the festival prospered, and in this its 10th year, has brought the Americans back with a stonking programme.