contemporary dance
Acosta Danza, Sadler's Wells review - here comes the sunTuesday, 15 February 2022
If Carlos Acosta could have bottled the year-round sunshine of his native Cuba, he would have. Instead he did the next best thing and founded Acosta Danza. Seven years later, years which included a UK tour kiboshed by the first lockdown, when the... Read more... |
Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker!, Sadler's Wells Theatre review - new candy, but the nuts are offFriday, 17 December 2021
The legendary quip of a sophisticated ballet critic that we are all one Nutcracker nearer death never rang so true as now. One goes to the theatre with one’s heart in one’s mouth, behind the partypooping mask.Matthew Bourne’s dance panto Nutcracker... Read more... |
Past Present, Linbury Theatre review - historic, but very much aliveThursday, 25 November 2021
Not so long ago, a few decades at most, anyone with a passing interest in dance knew what “modern” looked like. It was earthbound, usually barefoot, and it focussed on mundane movements such as walking or lying down as often as it looked like dance... Read more... |
Hofesh Shechter Company, Double Murder, Sadler's Wells review - a well-intentioned but misjudged double billFriday, 17 September 2021
If I had to sum up in a single impression the work I’ve seen of Brighton-based, Israeli-born choreographer Hofesh Shechter (now OBE), it would be that of a rock gig. His shows are noisy, populous affairs, and he writes his own drumbeat-driven music... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Hamburg: Ghost Light - a ballet in the time of coronaSaturday, 26 September 2020
So the Royal Ballet is to make a live comeback, for one night only, on 9 October. Fielding the entire company of 100 dancers, suitably distanced, the enterprise is being hailed as a triumph of logistics. And so it is. But the fact remains that the... Read more... |
Dancing at Dusk: A Moment with Pina Bausch’s 'The Rite of Spring' review - an explosive African riteSaturday, 04 July 2020
There’s sun and sand, and both are golden – but this is no holiday beach. Distantly, out of focus, you can make out a man with a donkey and cart. Off-camera, some locals kick a ball. A square of sand about the size of a tennis court has been... Read more... |
The Thread, Sadler's Wells Digital Stage review - Greek folk and contemporary uniteMonday, 20 April 2020
The latest Sadler’s Wells digital offering is 2019’s The Thread, a luminous collaboration between choreographer Russell Maliphant and Oscar-winning composer Vangelis (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner) for the Athens-based production company Lavris. It... Read more... |
Rumpelstiltskin, Sadler's Wells Digital Stage review - spins an engaging yarn for young audiencesMonday, 06 April 2020
The latest in Sadler’s Wells’ Digital Stage programme – an impressively assembled online offering to keep audiences entertained during the shutdown – is balletLORENT’s family-friendly dance-theatre production Rumpelstiltskin. It was... Read more... |
And Then We Danced review - glorious Georgian gay coming-of-age taleWednesday, 11 March 2020
The final sequence of Levan Akin’s coming-of-age drama And Then We Danced is as gloriously defiant a piece of dance action as anything you’ll remember falling for in Billy Elliot. Merab, the film’s youthful dancer protagonist (played by Levan... Read more... |
Isadora Now, Barbican Theatre review - a little piece of historyThursday, 27 February 2020
Mention Isadora Duncan and the best response you’re likely to get is “Wasn’t she that dancer who died when her scarf got caught in the wheels of a Bugatti?” The closing scene of the 1968 biopic starring Vanessa Redgrave seems to have blotted out... Read more... |
Resolution 2020, The Place review - new dance for a new decadeFriday, 17 January 2020
Resolution! is an annual programme at The Place (home of London Contemporary Dance School), devoted to showcasing new choreographers. Over the past 30 years several have gone on to make it big, so there’s a reasonable chance that, somewhere among... Read more... |
Acosta Danza, Sadler's Wells review - a dose of Cuban sunThursday, 21 November 2019
Second album, second novel, second tour programme – the follow-up is always tricky. But the timing couldn’t be better for Acosta Danza, the Havana-based dance company which made its UK debut in 2017. These 20 young Cubans, handpicked by Carlos... Read more... |
