Dance
Hanna Weibye
How do you know Wayne McGregor? Dance-goers with long memories might remember Wayne McGregor as the wunderkind who founded his own company and became resident choreographer at The Place aged just 22. Lovers of contemporary dance will be familiar with his company Random Dance, which boasts some of the best dancers in the business and periodically brings sophisticated, hi-tech pieces to Sadler’s Wells. Balletomanes will know him from his work with major ballet companies, including a long-term residency at the Royal Ballet. Cognitive neuro-scientists, anthropologists and other academics might Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
This morning, those who follow ballet on both sides of the Atlantic might be feeling a bit like the male soloists at the beginning of Ashton’s Scènes de Ballet: turning their heads sharply, almost pantomimically, from side to side. Over there, in New York, Wendy Whelan, the prima ballerina retiring after a 30-year career with City Ballet, made her farewell in a programme heavy on modern masters Wheeldon and Ratmansky, including a world première. Over here, in London, the Royal Ballet performed a quadruple bill of works by Frederick Ashton, its revered and adored founder choreographer, the Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Another week, another war commemorative; it’s the story of all the arts in 2014. But – because you can always rely on David Bintley and Birmingham Royal Ballet to be different – last night’s programme at Sadler’s was overshadowed by the Second World War, not the First. Nor were there any soldiers or war widows to be seen: instead this remarkable mixed programme danced from the doomed brightness of the inter-war generation, to religious experience in war-torn Clydeside, to a kilt-girt, abstract, bittersweet lament.Kenneth MacMillan’s 1979 La Fin du Jour is an odd bird. Deliberately evoking the Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Thirty-year-old Rocío Molina has been rattling cages in the hide-bound world of flamenco. Back home in Spain, gloom-mongers are predicting she’ll bring down the art form with her brazen, off-the-leash excursions from its honoured tropes. Her shows are popular. And the fluorescent four-inch heels and electric bass guitar that feature in her latest – brought to London for three nights by Dance Umbrella, following a storming reception in Seville – will have done nothing to reassure traditionalists.Not one of the scenic or sartorial elements we’ve learnt to expect in theatre-mounted Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
New Adventures, the name of Matthew Bourne's company, has a ruddy-cheeked, Boys’ Own ring to it that has – until now – been rather belied by his oeuvre, which includes a dance version of Edward Scissorhands, as well as dark retellings of all the traditional story ballets. But the New Adventure which rolled into Sadler’s Wells last night really is an adventure – an adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the desert island schoolboy story heavy with allegory about the propensity of human beings to descend into barbarism.Civilization and barbarism are complex terms, and political Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Grupo Corpo means Body Group, and if that sounds like the name of a global exercise consortium, it’s because it should be. If I were an entrepreneur media mogul type, I would have shot out of my seat at Sadler’s Wells last night and straight round to the stage door to persuade the Pederneiras siblings who run the company - it's emphatically a family business - that they need to do a fitness video or five, and syndicate an accompanying wordwide branded exercise class guaranteed to have the likes of Zumba and Les Mills, the BodyPump people, quaking in their last year’s Nike Airs.Grupo Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
In a moment of wild fantasy, I thought I might try and write a whole review of Manon without mentioning sex. After all, there’s plenty of other stuff going on in Kenneth MacMillan’s tale, which last night at the Royal Opera House celebrated 40 years since its première. Inequalities of class, wealth and power are ever present, and in fact drive the story to its sticky (quite literally) conclusion in the Louisiana swamps. It's not precisely her screwing around that lands Manon on a one-way penal transport to the colonies, but her (and her brother’s) screwing over of a rich man.But who was Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
The fabulous dancers known as BalletBoyz The Talent 2014 looked so at home in the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio Theatre last night that it was hard to believe they had never performed there before. The BalletBoyz themselves, Michael Nunn and Billy Trevitt, were Royal Ballet leading men back in the day, and they have been back to Covent Garden since leaving in 1999 to explore new avenues in contemporary ballet for men, but this was the first time that their new company of young dancers (now 10-strong) had been invited into the inner sanctum of British ballet. Hurrah for them all - it’s a Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Who qualifies as an older dancer? Given that a professional dance career usually runs from about 17 to 35, anyone continuing to dance past 40 can expect comments on their age and speculation about when they'll stop – see Sylvie Guillem, Wendy Whelan, Leanne Benjamin, Carlos Acosta. People who are physically extraordinary and have interesting minds are worth watching at any age, but public performances by dancers over 50 are still very rare indeed. So hurrah for the Elixir Festival at Sadler’s Wells this weekend, which is all about older dancers, and put its money where Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
The Royal Opera House is on fire this month. Not literally (unless someone knocks over the flaming braziers outside) but with the varied illuminations of the Deloitte Ignite Festival, co-curated by the Royal Ballet and Minna Moore Ede of the National Gallery. The theme this year is Myth, and specifically Leda's rape by Zeus in swan form, and Prometheus's gift of fire to humanity. Artworks dealing with these two stories, or with swans and fire more generally, are to be seen all over the building, which this weekend was open during the day for a variety of public events, from film screenings to Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Once, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was all about penniless students presenting avant-garde plays to audiences of three in church halls. These people still come, but now they compete for attention with professional production companies who, it’s to be supposed, make a decent whack of money from their three weeks in Scotland’s tourist-jammed capital.Australian contemporary circus outfit Circa are in the latter camp, spending this year’s Fringe with a prime 7pm spot in the McEwan Hall, the largest venue used by successful Fringe promoters Underbelly. At £16.50 for an hour-long performance, Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Dance as an art form doesn’t have a great track record in social and historical commentary. The endless grey areas, not to mention the complicated details, of history really require words to do them justice. Flamenco, of course, has words, but it’s still a highly emotive art form, one you might think unlikely to produce a subtle take on the theme of homeland. But 72-year old Paco Peña is not only one of the greatest living flamenco guitarists, he’s also a great producer, putting on thoughtful shows with wonderful performers from other traditions, seemingly revelling in the artistic richness Read more ...