dance
Woolf Works, Royal Ballet review - Wayne McGregor's modern classic impresses all over againMonday, 06 March 2023
The more Wayne McGregor’s superb Woolf Works is staged, the richer it seems to become. It has started a third run at Covent Garden since its premiere there in 2015, which, considering the house lost over a year of performances, is some achievement. It is the mark of an instant modern classic. Read more... |
The Sacrifice, Dada Masilo, Brighton Dome review - eye-popping dance from South AfricaFriday, 24 February 2023
The Soweto-born dancer-choreographer Dada Masilo has made her name telling classic European stories in African dialect. The last piece she toured in the UK was a striking Giselle in which the avenging Wilis were not undead brides but ancestral spirits led by a witch doctor. In his hand, instead of the traditional myrtle branch, symbol of chastity, he carried a fly whisk. Read more... |
Creature review - Asif Kapadia shines light on a dark dance pieceFriday, 24 February 2023
Filmed ballets involve a different way of watching: you may know a piece well, but you aren’t used to staring into its lead dancers’ eyes as they perform their roles. Not all dancers give good close-up, either. But a new film by the Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia of Akram Khan’s Creature, made for English National Ballet in 2021, has transformed the original live version into a moving drama. Read more... |
Julie Cunningham & Co, Sadler's Wells review - a fine piece of work, with added spiceTuesday, 24 January 2023
At the arthouse end of contemporary dance no one expects a packed house, still less serial packed houses for more than a week. Yet Sadler’s Wells was fully confident when it invited the dancer-choreographer Jules Cunningham – one of its New Wave Associates – to premiere a new work on its main stage. Read more... |
Swan Lake, English National Ballet, Coliseum review - the story of a deluded princeThursday, 19 January 2023
So there’s this prince, see, and he’s not at all happy. For a start, he never got over losing a parent when he was a child. He’s at odds with the world, sick to death with royal protocol and convinced that no one understands him. Worse, having too much time on his hands, he suffers from delusions. Meet Prince Siegfried, who found his soulmate, and met his nemesis, on a moonlit night by a lake. Read more... |
Best of 2022: DanceFriday, 30 December 2022
Come the end of the year, the ritual glance over the shoulder, what we crave is celebration – this year of all years. "Look, we have come through!" is what we all want to hear from arts practitioners who took such a battering in the previous one. Read more... |
Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty, Sadler's Wells review - a gothic romance with loads of goth and not much loveSaturday, 17 December 2022
Matthew Bourne is not the first choreographer to tinker with the story of The Sleeping Beauty and he won't be the last, such is the lure of Tchaikovsky's score and the potency of the plot. Read more... |
Ruination, Linbury Theatre review - Medea gets a makeoverWednesday, 07 December 2022
At a time when every other theatre is offering an alternative Christmas show, what to make of the Royal Opera House’s first collaboration with Lost Dog, aka director-choreographer Ben Duke, who has come up with the most un-merry topic imaginable? Meet Medea, the vengeful sorceress of Greek myth, who butchered her brother, nobbled her ex’s new bride and murdered her own children. The Wind in the Willows this is not. Read more... |
English National Ballet: Ek, Forsythe, Quagebeur review - two masters, two marvelsSaturday, 12 November 2022
Of all the classic musical scores that could appeal to a choreographer, three are catnip: Ravel’s Bolero, Bizet’s Carmen, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Each has been set dozens of times and the veteran Swedish dancemaker Mats Ek has... Read more... |
Birmingham Royal Ballet: Into the Music, Sadler's Wells review - a visual and aural feastSaturday, 05 November 2022
Carlos Acosta’s idea of putting live music first and foremost in BRB’s latest mixed bill was a no-brainer. The Midlands-based company, directed by Acosta since early 2020, is unique among British ballet companies in being able to call on its own full-time orchestra (the Royal Ballet has to share theirs with the Opera), and it happens to be a first-class band. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Biss, National Symphony Orchestra, Kuokman, NCH Dublin revie...
On paper, it was a standard programme with no stars to explain how this came to be a sellout concert. But packed it was, an audience of all ages...
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Musical, Theatre Royal Bath r...
In Italy, they did it differently. Their pulp fiction tales of suburban transgression appeared between yellow covers on new stands...
Album: Will Smith - Based on a True Story
Will Smith’s new album, Based on a True Story, is a prime example of why some comebacks should remain hypothetical. After two decades...
Verdi Requiem, Philharmonia, Muti, RFH review - new sparks f...
Forget, for a moment, the legend and the lustre. If you knew nothing about Riccardo Muti’s half-century of history with Verdi’s Messa da...
Wilko: Love and Death and Rock'n'Roll, Southwark P...
Resurrecting the origins of old rock stars is becoming quite the thing, After cinema’s Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Bob Dylan and...
The End review - surreality in the salt mine
The End, a quasi-musical from Joshua Oppenheimer, who has previously only produced ...
Playhouse Creatures, Orange Tree Theatre review - jokes, shi...
Creatives – or creatures? In the 1660s, women – having been banned from working as actors in previously more...
Album: Perfume Genius - Glory
I can’t stop reading and re-reading the review copy I got of a new book, out next week. Liam Inscoe-Jones’s ...
La finta giardiniera, The Mozartists, Cadogan Hall review -...
Just now, the notion of a long-term project that concludes in 2041 sounds like an optimistic bet on the far future worthy of some 18th-century...