dance
Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929, V&AFriday, 24 September 2010
Museum shows don’t often evoke a sense of smell, but without even trying, this Ballets Russes exhibition has visitors’ nostrils flared. The show is – intentionally – a feast for the eye, and even for the ear, with ballet scores (sometimes rudely overlapping) playing in every room. But smell? Read more...
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Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Prog 2, Peacock TheatreWednesday, 22 September 2010
I have a friend who loves telling jokes. One night he started a well-worn story: “Please,” he said, “if you’ve heard this before, don’t stop me – it’s one of my favourites.” I am always reminded of that evening when watching Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo – the Trocks to their many thousands of fans across the world – when they touch down in London on one of their regular stops. Read more... |
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Prog 2, Sadler's WellsThursday, 16 September 2010
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre is making one of its regular stops in Europe (the company tours commitedly: not only in the USA, but more than two months of each year are spent bringing their bravura dance style to the world). It is to their enduring credit, then, that their performances look as fresh and as spontaneous as they do. Read more... |
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Prog 1, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 15 September 2010
Alvin Ailey dancers have been dancing about survival, grit, positivity and joy in the Lord for half a century now, and even though the parents of last night’s dancers may not have been born when Ailey did the unthinkable and launched a black dance company in the dark days of 1958 America, the company still evidently has an urge to rejoice running in its veins. Read more... |
Shoes, Sadler's Wells TheatreTuesday, 07 September 2010
Every time I go to Sadler’s Wells now I come out wondering if there’s something wrong with my hearing, so loud and numbing are their speakers. It’s a blight on a lot of shows, but on none more so than Shoes, because this is the first major London production written by that celebrated musical witsmith Mr Richard Thomas since his Jerry Springer, The Opera, and last night I missed probably half the words that I’m guessing should be the chief merit. Read more... |
theartsdesk MOT: Dirty Dancing, Aldwych TheatreSunday, 05 September 2010
I suspect that more than half the audience that goes to see Dirty Dancing on stage has seen the 1987 movie, and that quite a few of them have seen the stage version more than once. There’s a strange feeling of being at a party where everyone knows everyone, and the party’s held nightly at the same house. It surely is not the misleading title that accounts for the wildly enthusiastic flow of fans - there’s nothing dirty about this squeaky-clean story, and there’s not that much... Read more... |
Le Cirque Invisible, Queen Elizabeth HallSunday, 15 August 2010
Charm is as invisible as the circus but as undeniably present in Le Cirque Invisible, an adorable little presentation for which parents should go miles with children to see this month. Charlie Chaplin’s fourth daughter and her husband are not young things any more, and their two-person show is at least 40 years old in its various guises - but they simply keep adding and subtracting gags, costumes, dressing-up box illusions, magic tricks, rabbits, soap-bubbles, locking down a hall of... Read more... |
Cinderella, English National Ballet, London ColiseumWednesday, 11 August 2010
English National Ballet turns 60 next week, and nowadays just enduring has to be enough. Smelling of greasepaint and tour buses from the very first, it also smelled of stars - Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin who began it, Rudolf Nureyev and Natalia Makarova who created splendid productions for it, and extraordinary late-career performances by Lynn Seymour. Stars have been born in ENB too, even if they burst into full gleam elsewhere - Trinidad Sevillano, Tamara Rojo, and more than likely the... Read more... |
Tanguera, Sadler's Wells TheatreTuesday, 10 August 2010
Strange listening to Sadler’s Wells chief Alistair Spalding timidly defending “cutting-edge” dance on yesterday’s Radio 4 arts debate - having just been to the current SWT dance show, Tanguera. Read more... |
After A Dancemaker Dies, BBC Radio 3Sunday, 08 August 2010
Two giants of dance died last year: Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham. Right now audiences aren’t being deprived of seeing why their names are written permanently in lights in dance history (Bausch’s company performs in Edinburgh and London later this year, Cunningham’s is in London in October), but after 2011 they may be. Cunningham’s company will close, while Bausch’s will be in its last of an uncertain three-year grace period. Read more... |
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