dance
All You Need Is Death review - a future folk horror classicFriday, 19 April 2024
Music, when the singer’s voice dies away, vibrates in the memory. In the hypnotic new Irish horror film All You Need Is Death, those who search for long-unheard songs crave a certain melody that works a terrible magic on the living. In this pleasingly eldritch narrative debut by documentary-maker Paul Duane, it’s unclear whether the forbidden tune will turn out to be a love ballad, a curse, or both. Read more... |
MacMillan Celebrated, Royal Ballet review - out of mothballs, three vintage works to marvel atSaturday, 06 April 2024
Triple bills can be a difficult sell for ballet companies. Audiences prefer big sets and costumes, and a storyline they can hum. It’s not hard to see why Kenneth MacMillan’s full-evening hits Romeo and Juliet and Manon have turned out to be such a valuable legacy for his widow and daughter – companies around the world have an endless appetite for staging them. Read more... |
Carmen, English National Ballet review - lots of energy, even violence, but nothing new to sayWednesday, 03 April 2024
The story of Carmen is catnip to choreographers. No matter how many times this 180-year-old narrative has been tweaked and reframed in art, theatre, opera, dance and film, they keep coming back for more – which is curious when you consider that Carmen began life in a saucy French novella read in smoking rooms and gentlemen’s clubs. Read more... |
WAKE, National Stadium, Dublin review - a rainbow river of dance, song, and so much elseThursday, 21 March 2024
In what feels like the beginning, or at least the Old Testament, there was Riverdance. Now, ready to flow through the world once the world knows it needs it, there’s a rainbow-coloured river of just about everything musical and choreographic that’s found its place in contemporary Ireland, performed with a pulsating energy as well as a poetry that stops you wondering too much about all the connections. Read more... |
Swan Lake, Royal Ballet review - grand, eloquent, superbFriday, 08 March 2024
In uncertain times like these, the single thing that every flagship ballet company needs is a convincing iteration of a 19th-century blockbuster. New works are all very well and necessary, but they don’t have the pulling power of Swan Lake, or the staying power. Read more... |
Dance for Ukraine Gala, London Palladium review - a second rich helping of international dancersTuesday, 20 February 2024
It’s tempting to see the second gala created by Ukrainian-born Ivan Putrov as a reflection of the shift in Ukraine’s fortunes since his first one in March 2022. Somehow, just weeks after Ukraine was invaded, Putrov and his fellow student in Kyiv, Alina Cojocaru, brought the world’s finest principals to the London Coliseum for a show-stopping gala that was as moving as it was finely executed. Read more... |
Nelken: A Piece by Pina Bausch, Sadler's Wells review - welcome return for an indelible classicThursday, 15 February 2024
Perhaps the most memorable of the stage designs Peter Pabst created for Pina Bausch is back in London after nearly 20 years: a sea of erect pink silk carnations, the Nelken of the title. It’s canonical that there are 8,000 of them, but only the backstage team know the truth of that. Read more... |
Dark With Excessive Bright, Royal Ballet review - a close encounter with dancers stripped bareWednesday, 14 February 2024
The word “immersive” is overused. When an immersive experience can be anything from a foreign language course to a trip down the Amazon on a headset, what might immersive dance involve? Not watching from a plush-covered seat, probably, and the dance not happening on a stage. Read more... |
La Strada, Sadler's Wells review - a long and bumpy roadThursday, 01 February 2024
Federico Fellini’s 1954 classic La Strada ought to be a gift to a choreographer. The film has pathos, good and evil, a bewitchingly gamine heroine, and incidental music by the great Nino Rota, a composer who can find melancholy in the music of carnival and joy in a tragic trumpet solo – a composer who makes you think “Italy” in every phrase. Read more... |
Manon, Royal Ballet review - a glorious half-century revival of a modern classicTuesday, 23 January 2024
It’s 50 years since the first, damning reviews of Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet Manon declared it to be too long and lumbered with terrible music. One of them also said that the title role was an appalling waste of the ballerina who, in the title role, was reduced to “a nasty little diamond-digger”. Read more... |
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