dance

Thamar/ Sheherazade, Les Saisons Russes, London Coliseum

Ismene Brown Thursday, 14 April 2011

Irma Nioradze as Thamar: Laser light show and see-through pink leopard spots all part of the new Diaghilev experience

We’ve been so well educated or so roundly brainwashed to expect a certain high standard of Russian ballet that to experience the first two programmes of the three offered by the “Russian Seasons" team at the Coliseum, so-called tributes to Diaghilev, is more than a shock - it’s a brain injury.

The Blue God/ The Firebird, Les Saisons Russes du XXI Siècle, London Coliseum

David Nice Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Ilze Liepa as the goddess in the Lotus Flower entwined with Nikolai Tsiskaridze's Blue God

Anyone who feels, as I do, that the Aesthetic Movement's "cult of beauty" now on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum can't compare with the fabulous...

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Alice, Scottish Ballet, Glasgow Theatre Royal

Ismene Brown Wednesday, 13 April 2011

As the young waitress said in the restaurant where we ate after last night’s world premiere of Ashley Page’s Alice in Glasgow, she hadn’t ever been to ballet, but she was tempted to go for this - “It’s Alice after all, isn’t it? Wonderland. I’d love to see Wonderland.” The kind of new audience that any company should kill for.

And my friend said, sadly, yes, that’s what we’d also supposed it would be. "So shall I go?" she said. We said, um, you’re right. Ballet is the...

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Rosas, Fase, Sadler’s Wells

Judith Flanders Sunday, 10 April 2011

'Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich'

How do simple things get complicated? How do they stay simple once they are complicated? These might, perhaps, be the questions from which choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, starts. But in fact, she starts, as all great choreographers do, with the music. “Music is always my first partner,” she once said. And in Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, three linked duets and one solo, there are indeed three people on stage: de Keersmaeker herself, the wonderful...

The Place Prize for Dance/ Cinderella, Royal Ballet

Ismene Brown Thursday, 07 April 2011

It Needs Horses: A black-comedy duo for scraggy clown and louche trapezist - the audience choice

Reports of ballet’s death are greatly exaggerated, but I’m not equally sanguine about the craft of choreography. Having sat dumbstruck through the four limping dogs masquerading as finalists in The Place’s prize “for dance” [sic] on Tuesday, I found myself amazed, simply amazed, all over again at the fecundity and sheer knowledge of Ashton’s Cinderella, having its umpteenth revival last night at the Royal Ballet.

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Daniel Linehan, Sadler's Wells, Lilian Baylis Theatre

Charlotte MacMillan Wednesday, 06 April 2011

Photography is linked closely with memory. Photographs help us recall family, friends, holidays, and it can attest to an event. But one could argue that it actually serves a purpose of forgetting. As we are immersed in a digital age, the photograph becomes a series of binary numbers which doesn’t exist until it is written or printed, and which can be erased as easily as it is captured. Photographs are now as close to human recall as technology will allow. Daniel Linehan's Montage for...

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Cinderella, Birmingham Royal Ballet, London Coliseum

Ismene Brown Tuesday, 29 March 2011

Birmingham is the fount of beauty and magic when it comes to ballet design. Covent Garden - forget it, too much money, too little taste. What illustrates that truism is the comparison that can be made between the Royal Ballet’s cartoony Cinderella production returning to WC2 next week and the magical visual experience that is John Macfarlane’s vision for Birmingham Royal Ballet’s new Cinderella, having its London premiere at the Coliseum this week.

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Balletboyz, The Talent, Sadler’s Wells

Judith Flanders Tuesday, 29 March 2011

Well, if you’re going to headline yourself in the title of your show "the talent", you’d better have some: audiences aren’t forgiving. William Trevitt and Michael Nunn, ex-Royal Ballet dancers headlining their own company for the last decade, have a history of these pre-emptive strikes – an earlier show was called Critics’ Choice – and they also have a history of living up to them. Fortunately for all, The Talent does too.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Touring

Ismene Brown Friday, 25 March 2011

It's all about the ballerinas: Raymonda soloists (from left) Fernando Medina, Paul Ghiselin, Raffaele Morra and Robert Carter

Les Grands Ballets Classiques de Stoke Poges are a company waiting to happen for most of us, but for Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo a bitter rivalry must be endured - one of their ballerinas didn’t show up last night in High Wycombe, due to winging on a last-minute errand of mercy to the Stoke Poges mob. Fortunately Ida Nevaseyneva was available to totter in with her eternally moulting Dying Swan - and all suddenly became right with the world. The Trocks are an errand...