wed 16/07/2025

dance

Jérôme Bel, Cédric Andrieux, Royal Opera House Linbury Studio

Ismene Brown

Dance is eating itself. Or dancers are eating themselves, rather. It's on-trend to defy the idea of the mute dancer, and instead have them verbally explaining themselves, their motivation, their art. This year’s Dance Umbrella launched last night with the “self-contemplation” of Cédric Andrieux, a handsome blond Frenchman, who regales us in a charming murmur for 80 minutes with the story of his career, with danced illustrations.

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La La La Human Steps, New Work, Sadler's Wells

Ismene Brown

The first half-hour of Edouard Lock’s nameless new piece is some of the most thrilling dance imaginable; dynamic, mercurial, as men and women convulsed with frenzy fight each other in stark spotlights in the dark. They’re dressed in black, so that each flail, each clash, each twitch of a pink pointe shoe trails an outline of blinding light and throws a flashing black shadow. Mile-a-minute in the dark, it’s terrifying.

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The Metamorphosis, Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

Ismene Brown

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.

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Jewels, Royal Ballet

Ismene Brown

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.

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TeZukA, Sadler's Wells

Ismene Brown

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.

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Re-Triptych, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Playhouse, Edinburgh

Ismene Brown 'Re-(Part II)': 'You see a suddenly released abandonment quiver in sync through them all'

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...

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La Bayadère, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House

Ismene Brown

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.

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Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House: The Highlights

Judith Flanders

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.

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Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Stephen Hough, Joby Talbot, Schoenberg

graham Rickson

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.

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Swan Lake, Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe of China, London Coliseum

Ismene Brown

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.

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