dance

Dracula, Mark Bruce Company, Tobacco Factory, Bristol

mark Kidel Saturday, 28 September 2013

The rich cocktail of sex, bestiality and possession that lies at the heart of the vampire myth is a perennial crowd-pleaser, a surefire frightener set in an all-too-familiar discomfort zone. Mark Bruce’s rich and reference-laden take on Bram Stoker’s 1897 classic presents a Transylvanian count who is both Everyman and Other.

Thinking With the Body, Wellcome Collection

Sarah Kent Thursday, 19 September 2013

While the main gallery is closed for renovation, the Wellcome Collection has taken the opportunity to mount a fascinating upstairs show exploring the way choreographer Wayne McGregor collaborates with scientists.

Flamenco: Gypsy Soul, BBC Four

Ismene Brown Monday, 26 August 2013

Here's an association test - what's next in the sequence: flamenco, gypsy, soul? Yes, you win the free tourist trip to Andalucía along with writer Elizabeth Kinder, with whom you will almost certainly enjoy weak sangria and tapas while stumbling amusingly in bad Spanish, and you won't be troubled by a single unfamiliar thought about this alluring form of dance, music and poetic song.

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The Flames of Paris, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

Ismene Brown Monday, 19 August 2013

The Bolshoi left it till last to be most itself, to dance a ballet that is truly of its blood, its seed - its closing on Alexei Ratmansky's The Flames of Paris will leave much happiness in the memory to override the problematic productions of classics, the unidiomatic Balanchine and the awful backstage events.

Jane Eyre, Shanghai Ballet, London Coliseum

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 15 August 2013

For their first visit to the UK, Shanghai Ballet have brought a narrative ballet based on a Chinese theatrical version of Jane Eyre. It focuses on Bertha Mason, Mr Rochester’s mad wife in the attic, whose fate has often troubled readers, though the Shanghai narrative does not ask about the economic and social conditions of exploitation, the colonialism and sexism that have trapped her.

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Jewels, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

Judith Flanders Tuesday, 13 August 2013

The Bolshoi’s summer season in London has so far been straight-down-the-line trad: Swan Lake as an opener, Bayadère, Sleeping Beauty. Now, however, with Balanchine’s Jewels, they’ve at least dipped a pointe shoe into the 20th century, if rather cautiously.

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The Sleeping Beauty, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

Ismene Brown Tuesday, 06 August 2013

The Bolshoi Theatre reopened in late autumn 2011 after a problematic six-year refurbishment said to have cost a tidy billion dollars, many times its original estimate thanks to corruption - it needed a corker of a ballet premiere to pop the eyes of a cynical Russian public, and it set upon a new staging of The Sleeping Beauty.

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La Bayadère, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

Ismene Brown Sunday, 04 August 2013

It’s unspeakably bad for so many reasons that the injured Bolshoi Ballet director Sergei Filin cannot be in London to see his company perform, and one is that he can’t see his protegée Olga Smirnova revealing herself to us as destined to be one of the great ballerinas of this era.

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Carlos Acosta, Classical Selection, London Coliseum

Ismene Brown Wednesday, 31 July 2013

The mighty adorable Carlos Acosta is at the London Coliseum this week in all his might and all his adorableness - four times, you may like to know, he appears without his shirt on.

Swan Lake, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

Ismene Brown Tuesday, 30 July 2013

Everyone must be wishing the Bolshoi Ballet a swift return to company health after the tragic events of this year, as well as a return to physical health by their horribly injured artistic director - in the circumstances it’s heroic that they have got to London at all, let alone in such good performing order as they showed last night.