dance
Serenade/Carmina Burana, Birmingham Royal Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 20 March 2015
Serenade seems to be one of George Balanchine’s most evanescent works, a floating, delicate skein of movement that is over almost before it begins, leaving nothing but memory behind. In reality, it is tough as old boots, a warrior of a ballet, one that endures, survives – and enchants over and over. Read more...
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The Pursuit of Now, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 18 March 2015
Even for a dancer of Akram Khan’s sublime gifts, “Now” is an evasive concept to convey. During last night’s Sadler’s Wells extravaganza of Azerbaijani jazz and contemporary dance, “The Pursuit of Now”, Khan and his co-performer, the German-Korean dancer Honji Wang, mesmerised in a series of vignettes, gorgeously choreographed and lit. Read more... |
Modern Masters, English National Ballet, Sadler's WellsThursday, 12 March 2015
Reviews of English National Ballet in which I rave about what Tamara Rojo is doing for the company are getting to be the norm round here. Read more... |
Say Yes To Another Excess - TWERK, Sadler's WellsSaturday, 07 March 2015
"The music will be loud," the slender usher warns on entry to altered natives' "Say Yes To Another Excess" – TWERK, as a Grime bassline shakes the flimsy theatre floor. She hands over a text-heavy programme and does not frisk me. This is no London Bridge warehouse, although bouncers giving out freesheets on the door could be a great way to get the middle classes down to a rave. For now regular Rinse FM DJs Skilliam and Elijah are coming to the ballet. Read more... |
Nómada, Compañía Manuel Liñán, Sadler's WellsMonday, 02 March 2015
"Sprung from pure flamenco, Manuel Liñán exudes purity from himself and his dance - he is life, freshness and passion." Leaving aside the need for a better copywriter, or at least translator, what does this, the opening line of the flamenco performer's biography in the programme for the Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival, tell us about him? That he's not afraid of making big claims, certainly. That he may have a teeny bit of a god complex ("sprung from"? Read more... |
Eva Yerbabuena/Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 24 February 2015
The Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival is cunningly scheduled for that particularly dreary fortnight in late February when winter has been going on forever, spring is still just out of reach, and half term brings the dismal realisation that we're only just halfway through the school year and summer holidays are still at least five months away. Read more... |
Swan Lake, Royal BalletWednesday, 11 February 2015
Is there an art-form more tied to bad as well as good tradition than classical ballet? Yolanda Sonnabend’s unatmospherically if expensively kitsch designs for this Swan Lake wouldn’t have lasted more than a season or two in the worlds of theatre and opera, yet here they still are in Anthony Dowell’s soon-to-be-retired homage to Petipa and Ivanov, first seen in 1987 and due to take Swan Lake at Covent Garden past the 1000th performance in the present run. Read more... |
The Associates, Sadler's WellsSunday, 08 February 2015
The Associates is not the title of a new Scandi crime drama, though in dance world terms we’re perhaps approaching that level of Event. Associates are what Sadler’s Wells, London’s dance powerhouse, calls the selected band of dancemakers it deems serioulsy interesting, and worth co-commissioning. Read more... |
One Flute Note/Body Not Fit for Purpose, Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 03 February 2015
One of the dance world's better-kept secrets is the existence of a brilliantly inventive comic double-act consisting of two paunchy, balding 50-something men. Read more... |
Onegin, Royal BalletThursday, 29 January 2015
The habit among ballet critics of being simultaneously down on John Cranko's 1965 Onegin and up on Kenneth MacMillan's 1974 Manon is a curious one. Read more... |
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