fri 26/09/2025

dance

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support

Tom Birchenough

We are bowled over! 

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iD-Reloaded, Cirque Éloize, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury review - attitude, energy and invention

Jenny Gilbert

It was the absence of performing animals that defined it in the 1980s, but contemporary circus has come a long way since. Cirque Éloize, a smallish touring company which started in Montreal in the late 90s, has so effectively dissolved the boundaries between dance, acrobatics and theatre that it performs around the world under any or all of those banners.

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How to be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons, Teaċ Daṁsa review - a riveting account of a life in dance

Jenny Gilbert

Anyone who has followed the trajectory of choreographer-director Michael Keegan-Dolan and his West Kerry-based company Teaċ Daṁsa (House of Dance) will know by now to expect the unexpected.

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A Single Man, Linbury Theatre review - an anatomy of melancholy, with breaks in the clouds

Jenny Gilbert

Mind, body, body, mind. Medical science confirms the powerful two-way traffic between emotional and physical health.

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Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby, Rambert, Sadler's Wells review - exciting dancing, if you can see it

Helen Hawkins

If you have never watched a single episode of the BBC period gangster drama Peaky Blinders, I am not sure what you would make of Rambert’s two-act ballet version. I have watched all six series, and I still left confused. 

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Giselle, National Ballet of Japan review - return of a classic, refreshed and impeccably danced

Helen Hawkins

A new Giselle? Not quite: the production that Japan’s national company has brought over for its first British visit isn’t a radical Akram Khan-style makeover. What it offers is a tasteful refreshing of a great classic, like meeting an old friend with a new haircut. 

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Quadrophenia, Sadler's Wells review - missed opportunity to give new stage life to a Who classic

Helen Hawkins

The red, white and blue bull’s-eye on the front curtain at Sadler’s Wells tells us we are in the familiar territory of Pete Townshend’s rock musical about teenage angst in 1960s Britain. What follows isn’t so easy to recognise.

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The Midnight Bell, Sadler's Wells review - a first reprise for one of Matthew Bourne's most compelling shows to date

Jenny Gilbert

Rarely has a revival given a firmer thumbs-up for the future of dance-theatre. Yet Matthew Bourne’s latest show, first aired at the tail-end of lockdown, is far from being a high-octane people-pleaser. It won’t send its audience out teary-eyed and shaken as his Swan Lake did and continues to do.

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Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works, Royal Ballet review - the impressive range and reach of Christopher Wheeldon's craft

Jenny Gilbert

Ballet is hardly a stranger to Broadway. Until the late 1950s every other musical had its fantasy ballet sequence – think Cyd Charisse in Singin’ in the Rain, or Laurey’s dream in Oklahoma!, whose first interpreter was its choreographer Agnes de Mille.

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The Forsythe Programme, English National Ballet review - brains, beauty and bravura

Jenny Gilbert

It’s hard to think of anyone even half as persistent as William Forsythe in changing the conversation around ballet. The American choreographer first came to notice with what became the defining dancework of the late 1980s.

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