dance
Carlos Acosta, Premieres, London ColiseumSunday, 01 August 2010![]()
Great stars get lost sometimes. Up there in outer space, ringed with adulation, when they get a mid-life crisis sometimes they get sucked into a vanity black hole. No light emits, just the tatters of an angel who lost his way in his own legend. Read more... |
Serenade & Giselle, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseMonday, 26 July 2010![]()
We’re getting used to expecting the extraordinary from Natalia Osipova - and then getting some more. With her impish face and farouche capriciousness, with a spring like a high-jumper and shoulders like a swimmer, she is without doubt the most explosively delightful comedienne and virtuoso around at the Bolshoi, but could she be a Giselle? Read more... |
Coppélia, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseThursday, 22 July 2010![]()
Coppélia is the name of the doll in the ballet-comedy - not that of the heroine, who is a bad pixie named Swanilda, a girl of youthful capriciousness but a heart of gold. Read more... |
Laurencia, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumTuesday, 20 July 2010![]()
Rape, marauding soldiers, peasants on the warpath and a flash hero - are we at the Bolshoi’s Spartacus once again? No, we’re at the Mikhailovsky Ballet down the road at the Coliseum where a rather more Erroll Flynn-type spectacle is being offered, Laurencia. Read more... |
Spartacus, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseMonday, 19 July 2010![]()
Roll up, roll up for the ancient Roman circus of a production almost as old as I am. Thrill to the catchy tunes and the oom-pah basses of flash Aram Khachaturian, played with the kind of lurid splendour you thought could only be faked on Soviet-era Melodiya recordings. Enjoy the pageant of sword-waggling, goosestepping cohorts, flagellated slaves, skimpy-tunicked maidens and golden-wigged ephebes. Read more... |
Gala programme, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumMonday, 19 July 2010![]()
The Mikhailovsky Ballet is full of surprises. Predictably for a Russian company it brought a gala programme yesterday - unpredictably, it brought a rare example of St Petersburg 19th-century ballet comedy and a new commission of contemporary ballet. Neither of these is box office, so how refreshing is that? Then there were the thongs-and-glitter pas de deux of the strenuous 20th-century Soviet athletic style, and a classical jewel from Sleeping Beauty, and a wholly delightful court... Read more... |
Swan Lake & Giselle, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 15 July 2010![]()
It would be tough for any Russian ballet company to come into worldly, balletwise London just ahead of the great Bolshoi, but the Mikhailovsky Ballet make a very pleasing impression in their first week at the Coliseum with a pretty and historically interesting Swan Lake and a gently antique Giselle, and dancing that more than most underscores the rare pleasures of period style. Read more... |
Hofesh Shechter's Political Mother, Sadler's WellsThursday, 15 July 2010![]()
In the middle of the pulverisingly loud and utterly thrilling experience that is Hofesh Shechter’s new production Political Mother, I wished suddenly that all dancers could come and see this piece, see what clarion theatre dance can be. Read more... |
Royal Ballet School Matinee, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 11 July 2010![]()
The annual tradition that is the Royal Ballet School Matinee at Covent Garden isn’t just some prestige indulgence for the nervous parents of ballet children fortunate enough to survive the militaristic training and dogged enough to want to continue into the beckoning career where there are such frail job prospects. It is a place where the gap between a good student and a potential artist comes clear through the sheer size and one-offness of the occasion. Read more... |
David Michalek: Slow Dancing, Trafalgar Square/ Nederlands Dans Theater, Sadler’s WellsTuesday, 06 July 2010![]()
One of the most difficult questions to answer is what makes a great performer great? So much that happens on stage takes place in an eye-blink. Dancer A is "better" than Dancer B, but why? Critics talk about "line", about "extension", about how dancers use and shape space. But it is hard to see shapes in words. Now portrait photographer and installation artist David Michalek has, with one deft blow, solved this problem. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...

So much looked promising for Irish National Opera’s first Wagner: the casting, certainly, the conductor – Music Director Fergus Sheil knows and...

Mariam Batsashvili, the young virtuosa pianist from Georgia, is a star. No doubt about that. Trained at the Liszt Academy in Weimar and winner of...

When the world’s darkness is too much, there is a Netflix rabbit-hole you can disappear down to a kinder place: the...

It took until the last song before Lauren Mayberry started to well up onstage, which was good going. The singer had mentioned early on the...

On the cover of her eponymous debut album, the Bolton-raised Toria Wooff reclines on a church pew located in Stanley Palace, a 16th-century...

The thrill of hearing “Crawdaddy Simone” never wears off. As the September 1965 B-side of the third single by North London R&B band The...

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra has had to put up with its fair share of artist cancellations over the last month, and the ensuing games of musical...

Brief History of a Family is a psychological thriller with a story familiar to anyone who has seen Ripley, ...