contemporary dance
Ismene Brown
Has the great pop diva Beyoncé plagiarised the great modern dance diva Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker? This is the burning question that has today sent disco popsters and fans of austere contemporary dance in a feverish crush to YouTube, comparing Beyoncé’s new "Countdown" vid with De Keersmaeker’s art-house dance Rosas danst Rosas. They’re turning over micro-flashes of Beyoncé, running them back, comparing them with… well, you have plenty of choose from, as De Keersmaeker doesn’t believe in throwing away her ideas in 10 seconds.And without any doubt, as anyone with eyes can see, the resemblances Read more ...
judith.flanders
“Jazz is my adventure,” said Thelonious Monk. “I’m after new chords, new ways of syncopating, new figures, new runs. How to use notes differently. That’s it. Just using notes differently.” Based on the title of the new hour-long piece by Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat, Brilliant Corners, named for Monk’s 1957 album, the naïve viewer might expect, at the very least, to hear some Monk. Not so. Gat has produced an always interesting, sometimes absorbing sight-and-sound world, but of Monk, or jazz, there is neither sight nor sound.With a 10-strong company of dancers, Gat uses a darkened stage Read more ...
Ismene Brown
It takes more than utmost craft and rich personality to hold the stage as a soloist - it takes a touch of divine self-belief, which Akram Khan has never displayed to more magnetic effect before than in his new solo DESH. Actually solo is too small a word for this epic, lavish display of the starpower that Khan now emits in the world of dance theatre.This production looks as if it has cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to stage, with its luxuriously liberal video animations by Yeast Culture, celestial lighting by Michael Hulls, an ambitiously created live/recorded soundscore by Jocelyn Pook Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Dance is eating itself. Or dancers are eating themselves, rather. It's on-trend to defy the idea of the mute dancer, and instead have them verbally explaining themselves, their motivation, their art. This year’s Dance Umbrella launched last night with the “self-contemplation” of Cédric Andrieux, a handsome blond Frenchman, who regales us in a charming murmur for 80 minutes with the story of his career, with danced illustrations.I have nothing against a chap expressing himself to me, especially when he has as gentle and self-deprecating a delivery as Andrieux, but I'm largely with Ray McCooney Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The clips as you load the DVD show women in extremis - women tied to the end of a rope, women being assaulted by mass male groping, women dancing on pointe with bleeding chunks of meat stuffed into their ballet shoes. Pina Bausch’s commentaries on women make her ballets disquieting viewing. Wim Wenders’ film, released as a 3D version in cinemas earlier this year, takes you into those deep, confused questions that Bausch’s dance works put.He had planned to make this film with Bausch, but her sudden death left him bereft. This film therefore became an elegy to her and her company, Tanztheater Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As artificial spaces, clubs struggle to embrace the organic environment. The music and arts collective Noise of Art are bridging the gap by working with the charity Trees for Cities, with DJs donating their time to raise funds for planting trees in London. On 17 September, Noise of Art is working with Trees for Cities at Battersea Park and taking over the Village Underground for a fundraising event.The events are supported by the Cultural Programme of the European Union and are part of the pan-European Metiss’age street art festival. During the day (between 10am and 3pm), Battersea Park will Read more ...
judith.flanders
Only three years ago, Hofesh Shechter, the Israeli-born, London-based choreographer, made the leap into the big leagues, almost overnight, with his Uprising/In Your Rooms double bill. The following year he produced a "Choreographer’s Cut", a bulked-up version in the Roundhouse, part dance, part gig. 2010’s Political Mother was received with rapture, so what next? Yes, of course, another Choreographer’s Cut, this time Political Mother in an amped-up version with 24 musicians and 16 dancers in front of a Sadler’s Wells audience, the front stalls removed and transformed into a wannabe mosh pit. Read more ...
alice.vincent
It’s not often that a venue’s stage door is easier to find than its main entrance, but The Old Vic Tunnels is one such location. For those behind Coming Up Later, however, this is all part of the fun of a three-evening underground festival featuring a rather wonderfully haphazard range of performances. The event is the product of The Old Vic’s outreach programme, Old Vic New Voices, and the funding and artistic crowd-sourcing network IdeasTap.com. Such collaboration resulted in an opportunity few emergent creative directors could ignore: a production team, a budget to play with and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Yesterday was a day when male physicality and the science of movement preoccupied - when you watch Rafa Nadal or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, you can’t help thinking about the contrasts of grace that achieve the same athletic needs; Nadal the pouncing cheetah, the rich, weighty speed of Tsonga. Thing is, when you watch programmes about the greatness of tennis, they don’t try to persuade you that it’s just as good to watch if you yourself learn to play and get it filmed for the public's delight.This false premise has recently taken over the entire contemporary dance world; we must become awful Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Last March’s Japanese earthquakes and tsunami, as we know, brought devastation to hundreds of thousands of Japanese. But it also caused a crisis in the 3D film industry, just as it is attempting to be born. The most important 3D tape stock finishing factory in the world was swept away by the waters.In the burgeoning 3D film world this caused consternation, and for no one more than the producers of the 3D version of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake that was just about to be shot at Sadler’s Wells by Leopard Films. It caused a terrifying lurch in price for the making of what has to be seen as a Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Michael Clark brings dancers into Tate Modern in a long shadow cast by some memorable events from choreographers Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. Now the ground on which Ai Weiwei’s poignant porcelain seeds were piled is swept clean and laid with a striking white-and-black dance floor, with audience seats arrayed on three sides and the massive height of the Turbine Hall politely decked with spotlights. It’s as if Clark wanted to turn the gallery into a dance studio, rather than insinuate dance into a gallery, which may partly explain the unrisen soufflé of th, his world premiere last night. Read more ...
judith.flanders
When asked if I wanted to go and see two dozen naked Canadians doing audience participation, the answer was, self-evidently, nonononononononono. And then, for good measure, NO. Well, I’m here to tell you, I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And I apologise to Dave St-Pierre and Company for my foolish prejudices. Un Peu de Tendresse Bordel de Merde ("A little tenderness, for Pete's sake") is an amazing evening of theatre.Nakedness, while headline-grabbing, is not the point. Pina Bausch described St-Pierre’s company as “my pornographic illegitimate children”, but as so often with Pina Bausch, she Read more ...