Sadler's Wells
Ismene Brown
I try to remember when I first saw Mark Morris’s dance company and what I thought of them. Fairly weird, I recall - like chubby church-goers, with their big bottoms, fleshy arms and homespun cheeriness, not remotely part of the sharp-boned, athletically wired contemporary dance that was all around. And they weren’t balletic either, despite their little village hall arabesques and occasional flying jetés. But by gum what they did was musical, and that smacked you straightaway.The dance world is even leaner and more chicken-jointed now, and musical understanding has virtually dropped out of Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Where to start with reviewing the "Diaghilev" evening of new choreographies at Sadler’s Wells last night? With the cool clean head of Wayne McGregor’s or the hot poxed genitals of Javier de Frutos’s? Well, as it’s a 100th birthday party for Diaghilev's iconoclastic Ballets Russes, there’s no harm in pointing out that the poxed genitals are an awful lot more amusing (with the accent on awful) than the familiar McGregorian chant of BSc theses to swot up while watching his dances.I have nothing against cerebral good taste, especially with the calibre of stage partners offered here by McGregor in Read more ...
Ismene Brown
On Britain’s Got Talent this year Diversity and Flawless raised the bar for street dance as far as mass British audiences were concerned, a public increasingly schooled by Sadler’s Wells’ smart and eclectic annual spring hip-hop festival. So Bounce, the Swedish crew returning to London with its 2006 version of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, has new standards to compete with.The title, Insane in the Brain, is the clue to the general outlook of the performance, which translates a would-be tragic melodrama into undemanding light entertainment with mild street dance and a big Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Antonio Gades, who died on 20 July 2004 in Madrid aged 67, was a giant of modern flamenco, a magnetic dancer and theatrical director who gained an international audience for flamenco while guarding its unique and complex character. His dance films and flamenco theatre productions, notably Blood Wedding and Carmen, trod the difficult line between modern innovations and ancient traditions, pleasing millions around the world while also being acclaimed by flamenco's purist cognoscenti. He himself despised many of flamenco's modernisers, particularly at the showbusiness and pop-culture end, Read more ...