sat 22/03/2025

dance

As One/ Rushes/ Infra, Royal Ballet

Ismene Brown

Someone sharp as a whip thought hard about the price-fun balance of the latest Royal Ballet triple bill. An accountant, probably.  Deep inside the cloisters of the Royal Opera House, they said: “Now top price stalls are £97 each for Romeo and Juliet, that’s nearly £200 a pair. Interval wine at £6 a glass, £24. A programme, train fares from - say - Windsor at £15 each, plus taxis. That’s £260 for their evening.

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Havana Rakatan, Peacock Theatre

sue Steward Havana Rakatan, on stage, Peacock Theatre, London.

Ballet was never meant to be like this: the London production of Havana Rakatan at the Peacock Theatre last night shattered all definitions and formalities and left the audience uttering squeals and sighs of delight (and sexual ecstasy) in response to the Cuban dancers’ remake of classical poses and lifts and pelvic-thrusting salsa moves.

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Compagnie Ieto, LIMF, Purcell Room

Ismene Brown

Compagnie Ieto are two modest Frenchmen with immodest circus skills - modesty in all the right proportions. Jonathan Guichard and Fnico Feldmann teamed up in 2006 and were finalists in the 2008 Jeunes Talents Cirque with this show Ieto, last night's hugely entertaining offering at the Purcell Room by the London International Mime Festival.

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Giselle & Men Y Men, English National Ballet, Coliseum

james Woodall

It's a short run, in London, but a sweet one. At the Coliseum, English National Ballet's revival of a 1971 Giselle is a showcase for a company on exceptionally calibrated form, offering audiences a taste of its myriad talent over six more shows after Wednesday's opening [the cast changes each time - Ismene Brown reviews a second cast below].

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Romeo and Juliet, Royal Ballet

Ismene Brown

There are times when critics sheathe their quill tips, others when they don’t. Rupert Pennefather, the tall blond Englishman who has been earnestly promoted by the Royal Ballet as hard as they can to be the next Jonathan Cope, has attracted some devastating notices, and last night’s emergency outing as Romeo isn’t going to fatten his cuttings file.

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The Snow Queen, English National Ballet, London Coliseum

David Nice Daria Klimentova's icy siren, decked out in Swarovski and flanked by her wolves

If your heart feels frozen while the ice glitters outside, warm it by reading Hans Christian Andersen's sharp, witty and enchanting fairy-tale The Snow Queen, or listen to the best bits of Prokofiev's erratic but often characteristic late ballet The Stone Flower. You could also drag yourself out into the cold to face Michael Corder's full-length choreography based on the Andersen story, selectively fitted to chunks of the Prokofiev score and interspersing them with other...

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Dance 2000-9: From Ballet to Hip Hop

Ismene Brown

The Noughts were a bonanza time for builders, scientists and bureaucrats in the dance arena, throwing up numerous fine dance venues and bases, collaborating intellectually with modern choreographers, or targeting social minorities, but the blazing new trend that captured public imagination dodged all of those - it came up from the street.

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The Royal Ballet in Cuba, More4 / The Rite of Spring, BBC Three

Ismene Brown

There were some odd sights in Christmas Day viewing but none more discomfiting, I’d bet, than seeing a ballerina lying on a physio’s couch having a leg dragged quickly up to touch the side of her head while the other leg lay perfectly still pointing downwards. Can the body really do that? Another weird sight - dozens of people in full 18th-century French costume and wigs dancing in 40-degree heat on a Cuban stage.

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Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Sadler's Wells

Ismene Brown

For a choreographer the moment your work becomes a classic is when the audience tells you that you’re casting it wrong. I’ve seen Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake more than a dozen times for professional reasons since it first took off from Sadler’s Wells nearly 15 years ago, and it’s not Adam Cooper’s blinding image all those years ago that’s telling me the press night cast last night wasn’t delivering what the work is worth.

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Pied Piper, Barbican & Into the Hoods, QEH

Ismene Brown

Hip hop is the new ballet. Instead of mostly girls in tutus, mostly boys in tracksuits; instead of pointe-shoes, trainers; instead of arabesques and fouettés, handstands and windmills; above all, instead of nice, nasty. The smell on stage is burning rubber from the shoes; the atmosphere is electric; lights fractured; discipline razor-sharp.

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