sat 12/07/2025

dance

Anna Karenina, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House

Judith Flanders

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 House

Ismene Brown

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...

Don Quixote, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House

Judith Flanders

It is all too easy to be cynical about the ballet version of Don Quixote. With almost no part for the title character, it is a 19th-century Russian take on faux-Spanish dancing, a farce in which the barber Basilio longs for the charming Kitri, while her father wants her to marry a rich fop. As the Radio Times used to say, “Much hilarity ensues.”

Read more...

Homage to Fokine, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House

Judith Flanders

Mikhail Fokine, choreographer to both West and East, looked forward and back, too. He studied in the old Imperial Theatre School when the tsars ruled Russia, and he was also Diaghilev’s creative genius at the Ballets Russes, moving dance into the 20th century before and after the Revolution. The Mariinsky, once his home, is a premier exponent of his multifaceted styles. 

Read more...

Carlos Acosta, Premieres Plus, London Coliseum

Ismene Brown

For most dancers the first base is to get principal roles. For a star like Carlos Acosta, second base becomes urgent: to find the career path beyond classical ballet. Like Sylvie Guillem he seeks out a new contemporary dance path to fulfil, being still full of glorious physical vigour and still well under 40. But it turns out to be about wise investment.

Read more...

Swan Lake, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House

Judith Flanders Uliana Lopatkina in the Mariinsky's 'Swan Lake'

Act IV is the core of Swan Lake. It doesn’t seem so theatrically, being a peculiar 20-minute bolt-on after an interval that frequently lasts longer than the act that follows. But musically it transcends everything that has gone before, its thready little waltz one of the most delicately tragic things Tchaikovsky ever wrote. And balletically, Lev Ivanov’s rigidly structured classicism draws viewers into the terrifying void that is death. While emotionally the frozen swan-maiden of...

Read more...

English National Ballet, Roland Petit Triple Bill, London Coliseum

Ismene Brown

An obsession with sex and death underlies many of the immortal works of 19th-century classical ballet. Giselle is seduced, La Sylphide does the seducing, the Sleeping Beauty is awakened by sex, the Swan Queen is an apparition of death to Prince Siegfried who is easily waylaid by her doppelgänger, Odile of the 32 fouettées. Roland Petit brought it all out in the open with his ballets in the next century. As one observer said in 1949 of the premiere in London of his ballet Carmen...

Read more...

Royal New Zealand Ballet, From Here to There, Barbican Theatre

Ismene Brown Simmons's 'A Song in the Dark': Simple, graceful moves with spacious shape and depth

All ballet companies dream of finding a genuine creative talent among their ranks, and the Royal New Zealand Ballet, visiting from the farthest end of the world ballet map, have one in Andrew Simmons. The unknown name on their triple bill on this rare visit to London shows a young mind drawn naturally to grace and understated expressiveness.

Read more...

Ashton's Romeo and Juliet, London Coliseum

Ismene Brown

Like planets crossing in the skies, light years apart, but by some ocular illusion coinciding, this conjunction of the two most thrilling young Bolshoi stars in the world and Frederick Ashton’s rarely staged Romeo and Juliet really must be seen. Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev are real-life lovers as well as phenomenal work colleagues and passionate actors. The freshness of...

Read more...

Hofesh Shechter, Political Mother: The Choreographer's Cut, Sadler's Wells

Judith Flanders

Only three years ago, Hofesh Shechter, the Israeli-born, London-based choreographer, made the leap into the big leagues, almost overnight, with his Uprising/In Your Rooms double bill. The following year he produced a "Choreographer’s Cut", a bulked-up version in the Roundhouse, part dance, part gig. 2010’s Political Mother was received with rapture, so what next?

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Album: Wet Leg - moisturizer

War, pestilence, famine, death. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill of them all. So what better time to visit the genuinely sunny uplands...

Nye, National Theatre review - Michael Sheen's full-blo...

The National Health Service was established 77 years ago this month. Resident doctors are about to strike for more pay, long waiting lists for...

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Tate Modern review - glimpses of anothe...

It took until the last room of her exhibition for me to gain any real understanding of the work of...

Album: Tami Neilson - Neon Cowgirl

Tami Neilson’s career is long and storied. The short version is that she began with a 1990s Canadian family band (opening for Kitty Wells, aged 10...

theartsdesk at the Ravenna Festival 2025 - Cervantes, Beetho...

Anyone seeking local genius in an international festival should look no further than the annual Ravenna concerts from Riccardo Muti – Neapolitan...

Girl From The North Country, Old Vic review - Dylan's s...

Well, I wasn’t expecting a Dylanesque take on "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" as an opening number and I was right. But The Zim,...

The Estonian Song and Dance Celebration 2025 review - the ma...

The branch of the fast-food chain Hesburger in downtown Tallinn shopping centre Solaris is busy. Nothing unusual as it’s located by the entrance...

Insomnia, Channel 5 review - a chronicle of deaths foretold

A mixture of legal drama, medical mystery and psychological thriller with creepy supernatural overtones, Insomnia sometimes seems to be...