dance
Birmingham Royal Ballet: Into the Music, Sadler's Wells review - a visual and aural feastSaturday, 05 November 2022
Carlos Acosta’s idea of putting live music first and foremost in BRB’s latest mixed bill was a no-brainer. The Midlands-based company, directed by Acosta since early 2020, is unique among British ballet companies in being able to call on its own full-time orchestra (the Royal Ballet has to share theirs with the Opera), and it happens to be a first-class band. Read more... |
Light of Passage, Royal Ballet review - a new full-evening work by Crystal Pite is eloquent and movingFriday, 21 October 2022
Marshalling a mass of bodies around a stage is what all choreographers do. But nobody does it quite like Crystal Pite, the Canadian whose half-hour piece "Flight Pattern" – a comment on the global refugee crisis – was a hit for the Royal Ballet five years ago, earning an Olivier Award. Read more... |
Mayerling, Royal Ballet review - a masterpiece of storytelling, darkly grippingSaturday, 08 October 2022
Although the loss of its 96-year-old royal patron can hardly have come as a surprise, Covent Garden has been slow to register it. The gold-embroidered ERs on those luscious red velvet stage curtains remain in place, and when Wednesday night’s audience was invited to stand for the playing of the National Anthem, the uninvited vocal response was heard to “send her victorious”. Old habits die hard. Read more... |
The Goldberg Variations, De Keersmaeker, Kolesnikov, Sadler's Wells review - keyboard harmony and atonal danceWednesday, 07 September 2022
Jean-Guihen Queyras and five dancers of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Rosas company in the Bach Cello Suites was a thing of constantly evolving wonder. So too is Pavel Kolesnikov’s ongoing dialogue with Bach’s Goldberg Variations, different every time he plays them. Would De Keersmaeker alone be able to hold her own dancing to this inventory of technical rigour and human emotions? Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Ravenna Festival 2022 - body and soul in perfect balanceWednesday, 13 July 2022
For once, a festival theme has meaning. “Tra la carne e il cielo”, “Between flesh and heaven”, is how Pier Paolo Pasolini, the centenary of whose birth we mark this year, defined his early experience of hearing the Siciliana movement of Bach’s First Violin Sonata (adding that he inclined to the fleshly). It provided the perfect epigraph to the four Ravenna Festival performances I attended this year, three of them as stunning as any hybrid event I’ve ever witnessed. Read more... |
The Rite of Spring, Pina Bausch/École des Sables, Sadler's Wells review - explosive and disturbingWednesday, 15 June 2022
Superstition, herd instinct, brutality, base terror. Whatever the precise narrative themes of Pina Bausch's response to The Rite of Spring – the most admired of dozens of dance settings of Igor Stravinsky’s score – it’s clear that it concerns aspects of behaviour deep-rooted in the human animal. Read more... |
The Car Man, Royal Albert Hall review - grand scale drama and decadenceMonday, 13 June 2022
Ever since his re-staging of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne has managed to update the art of storytelling through dance steps and gesture in a way that others have struggled to achieve. Read more... |
Like Water for Chocolate, Royal Ballet review - confusing and ill-conceivedTuesday, 07 June 2022
When George Balanchine said that “there are no mothers-in-law in ballet”, he wasn’t just stating the obvious. He meant that there are some things that simply cannot be expressed in dance. Emotion and nuance are a story-ballet’s native territory; factual complications are a no-go. Read more... |
Carmen, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - a flawed but fascinating retreadThursday, 02 June 2022
When Natalia Osipova comes a-calling, a choreographer doesn’t say no. The Bolshoi-trained ballerina, having commandeered all the prime roles in her nine years at the Royal Ballet, is always looking to conquer new territory. In a string of self-curated solo shows she has made forays into contemporary dance as well as staking out her supremacy as a dance-actress, often commissioning new work. Read more... |
Sacre, Circa Contemporary Circus, Brighton Festival review - an astonishing assortment of lifts and throws, daring and strengthMonday, 30 May 2022
Sacre isn’t your average big-top show. Created by Brisbane-based company Circa, this is modern circus meets contemporary dance – a conceptual deconstruction of the traditional experience, represented in a show of impressive strength, with real people reacting and responding to one another’s energies and intentions. Read more... |
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