contemporary ballet
judith.flanders
A few years ago, the word was that a new choreographer was showing interesting things. His name was Liam Scarlett, and although he was very young, some work that had been seen in a workshop was looking promising. It was not long before “promising” became actuality, and Scarlett’s first piece, Asphodel Meadows (main picture), was premiered on the Opera House stage. Now in Draft Works, an evening of 10 pieces by burgeoning choreographers connected with the Royal Ballet, we once again get a chance to see works-in-progress, to get in on the ground floor and be able, later, to say, “I was there Read more ...
Ismene Brown
What lies ahead for dance as arts spending cuts bite? Can it survive the withdrawal of public funds that support dancers' training, choreographers' creativity, employment costs and health care? Is protest necessary? A panel of the British dance world's leading figures was brought together by theartsdesk for a major debate last Friday in central London, as dance faced its own Question Time.Royal Ballet ballerina Tamara Rojo and English National Ballet's managing director Craig Hassall led the ballet troops, choreographer Rosie Kay and Val Bourne, founder of Dance Umbrella, headed the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The cool physical activity of McGregor’s Limen, the crimson passions of Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand, the symbolic sculpture of MacMillan’s Requiem - the weekend's new triple bill at Covent Garden shows three faces of British ballet-making over the past half-century. While none is the masterpiece of its creator, together they describe an arc over time where lyrical emotion became replaced by gymnastic motion, compression by diffusion, individual idiosyncrasy by a kind of balletic collective.Do I say, dance becomes less interesting thereby? False assumption. The fact that Merce Cunningham’s Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The first half-hour of Edouard Lock’s nameless new piece is some of the most thrilling dance imaginable; dynamic, mercurial, as men and women convulsed with frenzy fight each other in stark spotlights in the dark. They’re dressed in black, so that each flail, each clash, each twitch of a pink pointe shoe trails an outline of blinding light and throws a flashing black shadow. Mile-a-minute in the dark, it’s terrifying.Even more so given that the music being churned through some particularly emulsifying sound system from the small live band behind is neatly based on samples of Purcell’s Dido Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Sylvie Guillem is back, chicken-skinny, middle-aged, dressed like a dowd. Did I just write that? And let’s add: as swift as mercury, as exact as a feather, as light as the sun, and as eternal in intelligent beauty as Nefertiti. In contemporary dance, as I was saying at the weekend, it should be permissible to sit in the dark wondering at the inexplicable and the unbelievable. This great ballerina of our era is both inexplicable and unbelievable, in physique and in temperament. Not least incredible is that a Parisienne of 46 would allow herself to appear in two outfits that compete Read more ...
judith.flanders
Programming a mixed bill is a very delicate art, and what seems like an interesting mix to one person might appear to be an entirely random series of choices to another. The Royal’s new triple is the perfect example. The music – Stravinsky, Poulenc, Stravinsky – might suggest an air of 1920s Parisian je ne sais quoi in theory, but in practice, that’s not how things unfold, with an odd combination of Ashton at his spiky chic-est, followed by Glen Tetley’s quasi-religious memorial meditation, and topped by Macmillan at his – well, more of that anon.Scènes de Ballet is a formidable undertaking. Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Nico Muhly at the piano, Stephen Petronio in a false beard, a storm-at-sea theme derived from The Tempest - how hip is that? I Drink the Air Before Me, a new work for the Stephen Petronio Company as the opening night of this year’s Dance Umbrella (the annual international modern dance fest that packs London’s venues for the month), had promise. The young composer delivered, the theme had its moments, but the picture above is a fiction - it’s a wish-list, as so many publicity stills for dance are, fine tailfeathers for dull birds. A couple of hours later I grope for my notebook to remember the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
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.The regular returns of AAADC to Britain - and there’s a big nationwide tour this time - are constant wake-up calls to the spirit. How can you sit down-in-the-mouth about anything at all when you’re watching a girl haughtily unfolding her Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Choreography is a mystery art. How it happens - or indeed what happens - is as elusive to define as pinning down a brainstorm. There is no solid stuff, no rules, no pre-formed maxims, everything moves; the choreographer goes into a studio, finds some dancers, finds some music, finds some moves, finds some light and atmosphere - and this agglomeration of variables goes out on stage all too often to fall flat, a soufflé that didn't rise. It was insufficiently skilled, or its ingredients were stale, or it lacked the leavening of a compelling imagination or the flavour of real emotional Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A second coming for Michael Clark's recent Barbican commission Come, Been, Gone. Eight months after the London premiere (on which I opined unenthusiastically below last October), he has added another 20 minutes of choreography, they said, with new costumes and artworks. The revision is also now artfully retitled Come, Been and Gone. Not comma-Gone. And Gone. Makes all the difference. Furthermore, note the following revisions to the individual section names: the original "Come" is now entitled "Been", "Been" has actually gone, and been replaced by a new "Come" (that’s the inserted part) while Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A Balanchine on a mixed bill is a reminder of what a choreographer should desire to offer his audience: a specific new experience of art each time, not a repeated thumbprint in every ballet. Balanchine grew up in a borderless theatre country - jazz, music hall, Broadway, Cubism, Russian imperialism, folklore, classical piano studies, all soaked his personality and fed his imagination. It is a range of experience that both Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon have grown up without and it made the last of the Royal Ballet’s triple bills a faintly poignant affair. If McGregor and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
In a shock that will deeply upset US and UK ballet, leading young British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon has abandoned his own company, Morphoses, which he set up in the US less than three years ago as a rare example of a choreographer-led ballet troupe. His former executive director has pledged to continue the company under a series of annual guest curators from different artistic disciplines.The New York Times reports that Royal Ballet-trained Wheeldon resigned on 18 February after continuing rows between him and his executive director Lourdes Lopez. Lopez claimed Wheeldon could not Read more ...