Sadler's Wells
Hanna Weibye
In Trasmín, the curtain rises on two bodies leaning apart, yet reaching back to face one other, each columnar figure a twisted into a perfect spiral line from knees to the tips of curved fingers. Their feet are concealed by the great fabric swathes (for which “frills” is much too flimsy a label) of their traditional bata de cola dresses: rising from those grey cascades they look like two rococo sculptures in a fountain.One of the dress wearers is Belén Maya, a star who has done much over her career to incorporate other dance influences into traditional flamenco. And the other is Manuel Liñán Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
“Goya!” I scribbled enthusiastically in the first moments of La Pepa. “Dos de Mayo! Art as witness to history!” Despite the clichéd use of flickering strobes and a stock “chaotic” soundtrack of shouts and crashes, this opening scene purporting to represent the Spanish War of Independence (1808-1812, known in Britain as the Peninsular Wars) reminded me of the Spanish painter’s testimonies in oil to the horror and grandeur of that war; as shafts of yellow side-light pierced the blackness, unknown arms were flung up in the pose of the Tres de Mayo's doomed revolutionary before a firing Read more ...
Sarah Kent
In 2008, a disastrous fire gutted Cloud Gate’s rehearsal studio in Taipei destroying props, costumes and the company archive. Amazingly though, the masks worn by the deities in Nine Songs survived the blaze and Lin Hwai-min, founder of the award-winning company, was so moved by the miracle that he decided to re-stage this sumptuous work. The phoenix-like revival of the epic, first premiered in 1993, seems especially pertinent since resurrection is a recurring theme. Accordingly, a bed of lotus flowers, symbols of rebirth, fills the orchestra pit and designer Ming Cho Lee has covered the Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Review convention is to put this at the end, but I can’t risk you stopping reading before I can say: go and see 1980 while it is at Sadler's Wells this week. It is one of the most extraordinary works you will ever watch.If ballet is about getting off the ground and Graham/Cunningham-derived contemporary is about getting down to the ground, then German stage poet/choreographer Pina Bausch is about simply being on the surface of the ground. I can think of no other major choreographer whose dancers so consistently wear “normal” shoes, the kind most people in the audience will have worn Read more ...
Sarah Kent
At first the machines are in control. A crane drags the inert body of a woman across the floor, lifts her up and leaves her dangling from the waist. A man follows, dragged by one foot and suspended upside down. The two bodies rise and fall or swing round in a duet horribly reminiscent of carcasses hanging in an abattoir.French choreographer, Boris Charmatz is obviously not out to please us with a light hearted evening of frivolity. The mood lightens a bit, though, when the crane lowers its cargo onto a giant conveyor belt that gives the dancers a bumpy ride as it bounces up and down with Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Boing! shows that for a successful dance theatre production for children, you don't need very much. In fact, all that's required is a simple bed frame centre stage and a particularly bouncy mattress.Travelling Light and Bristol Old Vic teamed up with children's theatre specialist Sally Cookson to create this 45-minute show, which plays out to a young audience perfectly, with just the right amount of narrative, clowning, slapstick comedy and break-dance.It's the night before Christmas but you can forget about creatures stirring – the two boys here, Wilkie and Joel, are hardly nestled up Read more ...
David Nice
In 1995 a new avian species with unfamiliar markings, the Bourne swan, drew unexpectedly large crowds to a run-down old Islington theatre. I remember it well: seats in the gods were being worn so tight then that feet attached to long legs couldn't be placed on the ground and, negotiating a tolerable view downstairs at the box office, I missed 10 minutes of the display. Since then the very masculine Cygnus bourniensis has been sighted in unlikely places all over the worldand has now returned to overwinter in a more spacious and comfortable Sadler’s Wells. Rapid evolution over nearly two Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
“Comedy in ballet can be notoriously difficult to get right.” So warns the programme note for The Taming of the Shrew, choreographer John Cranko’s 1969 adaptation of Shakespeare, with which Stuttgart Ballet chose to end their run at Sadler’s Wells this week. The note of caution is well sounded in this context; while it is possible for the ballet to be both funny and affecting, the balance is extremely hard to strike, and yesterday's performance at Sadler's Wells was teetering dangerously on the edge of farce.Part of the problem lies in the source material: the original play is hardly the most Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Stuttgart Ballet, one of Europe's most highly respected companies, is clearly determined to show London its best sides – all of them. Thirteen pieces in one performance is less a mixed bill than a tasting menu, and one that aims to impress: this smorgasbord of pieces were all choreographed for the company, and more than half have not been performed in the UK before.The menu proper is preceded by an amuse-bouche which sets the tone for the evening: John Cranko's short Hommage à Bolshoi (1964) is a velouté of classical loveliness (perfectly rendered by the stunning lines of Maria Eichwald) with Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Can tango ever really be interesting as a pure dance stage show? After all, like most forms of social dance, its truest incarnation is in the fleeting and contingent encounters of the dance hall, the public ball, the open-to-all-comers late night bar. Making tango slick, polished, professional and repeatable enough to put behind a proscenium has all too often made it clichéd and even boring, predictably marketed through the putative sex appeal of tight dresses, twining ankles, and “Latin passion”. But by taking both the name and the inspiration for his latest piece from milongas, tango’s Read more ...