sat 19/07/2025

dance

Balletboyz, The Talent, Sadler’s Wells

Judith Flanders BalletBoyz, in Cemerek's 'Void'

Well, if you’re going to headline yourself in the title of your show "the talent", you’d better have some: audiences aren’t forgiving. William Trevitt and Michael Nunn, ex-Royal Ballet dancers headlining their own company for the last decade, have a history of these pre-emptive strikes – an earlier show was called Critics’ Choice – and they also have a history of living up to them. Fortunately for all, The Talent does too.

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Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Touring

Ismene Brown It's all about the ballerinas: Raymonda soloists (from left) Fernando Medina, Paul Ghiselin, Raffaele Morra and Robert Carter

Les Grands Ballets Classiques de Stoke Poges are a company waiting to happen for most of us, but for Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo a bitter rivalry must be endured - one of their ballerinas didn’t show up last night in High Wycombe, due to winging on a last-minute errand of mercy to the Stoke Poges mob. Fortunately Ida Nevaseyneva was available to totter in with her eternally moulting Dying Swan - and all suddenly became right with the world. The Trocks are an errand...

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Swan Lake, English National Ballet, Coliseum

Judith Flanders ENB's 'Swan Lake' corps: Photographed by their leading ballerina Daria Klimentová

As everyone who has been watching Agony & Ecstasy: A Year with the English National Ballet on BBC Four now knows, Vadim...

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The Most Incredible Thing, Sadler's Wells

Ismene Brown

There was not likely to be much ballet here, despite the Pet Shop Boys’ proud use of the word to distinguish their substantial three-act score. This delivers a richly James Bond-ish ride through big pop tunes, opulent filmic moments and some nice bumps between fantasy scene-setting and camp nightclubbing.

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Rhapsody/ Sensorium/ 'Still Life' at the Penguin Café, Royal Ballet

Judith Flanders

For those in the know, Sergei Polunin has been marked out as “the one to watch” from his schooldays. Since he won the Prix de Lausanne in 2006 and joined the Royal Ballet the following year, he has been “the next big thing”. Well, I’m here to tell you, after last night’s performance of Rhapsody, he is not the next big thing. He is the big thing now.

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Black & White, English National Ballet, London Coliseum

Ismene Brown 'Suite en blanc': Astronomically stylish as only French classical ballet can be

At the 11th hour (as we all know from the current telly series), English National Ballet has pulled a gorgeous plum out of its back catalogue that throws open vistas of what a ballet company should be: Serge Lifar’s sumptuous Suite en Blanc. Why this beauty, laced with the hot Spanish deliciousness of Eduard Lalo’s 1881...

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Agony & Ecstasy: A Year With the English National Ballet, BBC Four

Ismene Brown

You thought Black Swan was a nightmare depiction of the ballet world? Now watch Agony & Ecstasy: A Year With English National Ballet, Part 1 and squirm. Compare Natalie Portman’s tormenting balletmaster with ENB’s Derek Deane, as each of them stages Swan Lake.

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Cleopatra, Northern Ballet, Leeds Grand Theatre

Ismene Brown

Northern Ballet’s genes are rooted in the Royal Ballet’s narrative golden age of the Sixties, its most significant leader Christopher Gable having been the originally intended Romeo of Kenneth MacMillan’s iconic 1965 Romeo and Juliet.

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The Centaur and the Animal, Sadler's Wells

Ismene Brown

To achieve a black stage that emits or reflects no light is a hell of an achievement. To place a huge black horse with black rider onto that stage, without the slightest noise, and to contrive a black shadow on the black, is to create an image found in the fathomless wells of subconscious imagery, and the skill of that vision and realisation of it is something I doubt I'm going to forget.

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Royal Ballet

Ismene Brown

Some ballets are drugs in themselves - you’re under their sway no matter what the performance. Other ballets need drugs to help. This new Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is definitely of the second kind, a very odd, very shallow, very bright and brilliantly bold staging, that makes no sense, that offers no depth, but which I suspect would be a blast if one were slightly stoned. But to slip a complimentary spliff under the programme's whirligig cover would take it out of the small-...

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