dance
The Metamorphosis, Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera HouseThursday, 22 September 2011
My acid test for whether a show’s worth going to is, specifically, whether it was worth driving 27 miles into town and 27 miles back, spending, say, three or sometimes four hours travelling to see something 80 minutes long. Not often is it worth that. But if it was on in a theatre near you, it would be worth picking up. And so I say for Arthur Pita’s The Metamorphosis. Read more... |
Jewels, Royal BalletWednesday, 21 September 2011
On six more occasions you can have an ideal experience of dance by visiting the Degas exhibition at the Royal Academy and then going to see Balanchine’s Jewels at the Opera House. Read more... |
TeZukA, Sadler's WellsThursday, 08 September 2011
Edit, edit. Inside TeZukA there’s a charming, elliptical, hugely stylish piece begging to be sliced and trimmed into focus - just as the manga master Osamu Tezuka must have daily occupied himself with as he prepared his graphic cartoons. The visuals in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s piece are spectacular video animations of Tezuka’s fastidiously drawn scenes, the kerpows and the Zen landscapes, Black Jack, the transfigured rabbit. Read more... |
Re-Triptych, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Playhouse, EdinburghThursday, 01 September 2011
Shen Wei is only 43, but he’s packed an epic amount into his career. A child sent from home aged nine to study opera; an emigrant to New York; a return to China to choreograph the Beijing Olympics. His urge to put this extraordinary tale into dance theatre is understandable. That Re-Triptych, a semi-biographical creation that’s one of the Edinburgh International Festival’s features in its Asian dance programme this year, is only intermittently intriguing to watch, and largely... Read more... |
La Bayadère, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 14 August 2011
The bayadere bears on her shoulder a vase of holy water, and the story of the ballet La bayadère is of her refusal to compromise. She could better her life in two political deals: become the high priest’s mistress, or later, when bitten by a poisonous snake, take the antidote and live on while watching her sworn lover marry the princess who he knows tried to murder her. She refuses both. She remains, morally, the vessel of a purity that it would kill her spirit to give up. Read more... |
Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House: The HighlightsSunday, 14 August 2011
The Mariinsky Ballet has just completed a three-week season, with terrific highs (and the odd low). This was the 50th anniversary of the Mariinsky's (then Kirov's) first London visit, in 1961, and it is worth highlighting the role impresarios Victor and Lilian Hochhauser have played in the cultural life of London. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Stephen Hough, Joby Talbot, SchoenbergSaturday, 13 August 2011
This week we've a glittering, shimmering ballet score with an aquatic theme, and a brilliant British pianist shows off his compositional skills. Plus, in a week where we all need cheering up, 20th-century music's scariest genius shows that he had a fully developed sense of humour. Read more... |
Swan Lake, Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe of China, London ColiseumSaturday, 13 August 2011
What you see in the picture is the money shot, and yes, it's a miracle that you won't fully believe, even as you watch it. Read more... |
Anna Karenina, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseWednesday, 10 August 2011
It is claimed that the philosopher GE Moore had a fantasy. After many years’ work, Tolstoy had finally finished War and Peace. Sonya had copied it out for the umpteenth time. The thing goes off to the printer. Peace reigns. And then, in the middle of the night, Tolstoy leaps out of bed, shrieking, “I forgot to put in a yacht race!” Read more... |
Scotch Symphony/ In the Night/ Ballet Imperial, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseFriday, 05 August 2011
Great Mariinsky ballerinas are a breed apart, even from Bolshoi women. They take the stage with a consciousness of entitlement that’s thrilling to watch, and when this almost sacred sense of mystique and grace instilled in St Petersburg comes with vivid expressive distinction too, then there really is nothing like it. Even if three American 20th-century ballets might... Read more... |
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