Royal Ballet
The Limit, Linbury Theatre review - a dance-theatre romcom that lacks both rom and comTuesday, 31 October 2023
Imagine a world in which speech has a daily legal limit. Not a limit on what you say, but how many words it takes to say it. Now imagine how such a scenario might work as dance.Adaptations are so common on the theatre stage that the change of state... Read more... |
Anemoi / The Cellist, Royal Ballet review - a feast of music in a neat double billWednesday, 25 October 2023
Double bills at the ballet don’t often come as neatly gift-wrapped. Each of the works in question was made just before or during lockdown, arriving at its premiere by the skin of its teeth. Each went on to win a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award... Read more... |
Don Quixote, Royal Ballet review - crazy Russian-Spanish romcom, brilliant dancingFriday, 06 October 2023
It was Carlos Acosta’s new production of Don Quixote that launched the Royal Ballet season in the autumn of 2013, and as it does so again 10 years on, its sunny dynamism is just what the doctor ordered.Don Q, as it’s known to ballet fans, can be an... Read more... |
Untitled, 2023 / Corybantic Games / Anastasia Act III, Royal Ballet review - a magnificent end to the seasonSaturday, 17 June 2023
Is it a cop-out for an artist to label a piece of work “Untitled”? Painters and sculptors make a habit of it, reasoning that they want to leave the viewer free to bring to the experience what they will, unhampered and unlimited by prior information... Read more... |
Cinderella, Royal Ballet review - the first British ballet learns the language of flowersSaturday, 01 April 2023
The urge to redesign a heritage ballet is a curious one, given not just the expense but the fact that the main draw of an old ballet is the steps and the music, which stay the same whatever the stage dressing. The Royal Ballet was keen, however, to... Read more... |
'You want to cry from loving to do it so much' - Lynn Seymour 1939-2023Wednesday, 15 March 2023
As a critic, I’ve rarely felt compelled to mourn publicly about an artist. Mourning goes somewhere beyond the usual sense of loss and gratitude when someone's death has been announced. But it's the only word when the departed is one of the very few... 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... 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... 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;... Read more... |
The Weathering/Solo Echo/DGV, Royal Ballet review - the dancer as chameleonWednesday, 30 March 2022
Of all the expectations one might have of a new ballet from a choreographer raised on street dance who has made work about the American prison system, serene loveliness isn’t one of them. The name Kyle Abraham is not new to Royal Ballet... Read more... |
The unexpurgated Clement Crisp - in memoriamFriday, 04 March 2022
To the international world of ballet, Clement Crisp was the British critic to fear for half a century. Crisp's dance reviews for the Financial Times – "the pink 'un" – from 1970 until 2020 were legendary for their passionate... Read more... |
The Dante Project, Royal Ballet review - a towering achievementSaturday, 16 October 2021
Unless you happen to be a student of Italian language or culture, the significance of the 14th-century poet Dante Alighieri’s insights into the human condition may have passed you by, albeit that this year marks 700 years since his death. Where... Read more... |
