Dance
Jenny Gilbert
Superstition, herd instinct, brutality, base terror. Whatever the precise narrative themes of Pina Bausch's response to The Rite of Spring – the most admired of dozens of dance settings of Igor Stravinsky’s score – it’s clear that it concerns aspects of behaviour deep-rooted in the human animal.“How would you dance if you knew you were about to die?” was the question posed by the choreographer to her dancers back in 1975. And that visceral immediacy is brought to the fore by a 36-strong company of dancers assembled from across 14 African countries expressly for the performance of this Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Ever since his re-staging of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne has managed to update the art of storytelling through dance steps and gesture in a way that others have struggled to achieve.This new re-working of his 2000 dance-noir, The Car Man, has been adapted for the Royal Albert Hall with a catwalk stage that allows the audience to get up close and very personal with the dancers.In "Harmony, population 975", a mysterious stranger (Will Bozier as Luca) arrives in answer to a sign that reads "Man Wanted", and carnal havoc ensues. Lana, played seductively by Zizi Strallen, grows into Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
When George Balanchine said that “there are no mothers-in-law in ballet”, he wasn’t just stating the obvious. He meant that there are some things that simply cannot be expressed in dance. Emotion and nuance are a story-ballet’s native territory; factual complications are a no-go.Yet Christopher Wheeldon has ignored this famous advice in his latest three-acter for the Royal Ballet. The story he chose to adapt, Like Water for Chocolate, the 1989 bestseller by the Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel, not only features its fair share of convoluted family relationships but more crucially centres on Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
When Natalia Osipova comes a-calling, a choreographer doesn’t say no. The Bolshoi-trained ballerina, having commandeered all the prime roles in her nine years at the Royal Ballet, is always looking to conquer new territory. In a string of self-curated solo shows she has made forays into contemporary dance as well as staking out her supremacy as a dance-actress, often commissioning new work.Most memorably, in 2019, she starred in The Mother, a contemporary telling of the pitch-dark story by Hans Christian Andersen, about a young woman prepared to fight Death itself to save her baby. Osipova Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Sacre isn’t your average big-top show. Created by Brisbane-based company Circa, this is modern circus meets contemporary dance – a conceptual deconstruction of the traditional experience, represented in a show of impressive strength, with real people reacting and responding to one another’s energies and intentions.A group of 10 acrobats all in black dart around the stage with breathtaking speed and vigour, coming together and pushing apart in a series of lifts, throws and catches with alarming alacrity. They run, jump and fling themselves at each other at unexpected moments, hurling back Read more ...
graham.rickson
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Semyon Bychkov,with Chen Reiss (soprano) (Pentatone)Semyon Bychkov’s Mahler 4 is the first volume of a projected cycle from an orchestra with a surprisingly small Mahler discography. Mahler was born in what is now the Czech Republic, and the fanfares and funeral marches which fill his symphonies echo those he heard while growing up in Jihlava. The Czech Philharmonic does have recorded form in Mahler: Vaclav Neumann’s late 1970s symphony cycle on Supraphon is as idiomatic as they come, and there’s a thrilling vintage version of No. 9 Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
What do top ballet dancers keep permanently in their back pocket? Answer: a fully rehearsed, ready-to-go gala item, to judge by a one-off fundraising event mounted in double-quick time at the Coliseum last month and now available to stream, raising more funds for the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. The initiative came from Alina Cojocaru, Romanian by birth, and Ivan Putrov, a Ukrainian, both former principals of The Royal Ballet who trained together as 10-year-olds in Kyiv.As soon as the horror in Ukraine hit home the pair pooled their work contacts, inviting top-ranking Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Of all the expectations one might have of a new ballet from a choreographer raised on street dance who has made work about the American prison system, serene loveliness isn’t one of them. The name Kyle Abraham is not new to Royal Ballet audiences, but the squib of a piece he made for a mixed bill last year, Optional Family, gave scant idea of what he would do given 35 minutes of stage time, several more dancers and an orchestra. The Weathering, premiered as part of a contemporary triple bill, is surprisingly classical and utterly gorgeous.Abraham – who turns out to have a string of Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
In a week that saw the Royal Opera House lit up in the colours of the Ukrainian flag and its orchestra playing the Ukrainian national anthem, many theatres and concert halls found ways to express their sympathy for that country’s desperate plight. On Thursday the Barbican, celebrating its 40th anniversary with a performance of Haydn’s Creation by the LSO and LSO Chorus, held a two-minute silence before the start but forgot to tell the audience, who sat there wondering if the soloists were stuck in the tube-strike traffic. At both venues, management spoke of “the humanitarian crisis”, a Read more ...
Ismene Brown
To the international world of ballet, Clement Crisp was the British critic to fear for half a century. Crisp's dance reviews for the Financial Times – "the pink 'un" – from 1970 until 2020 were legendary for their passionate fastidiousness about ballerinas and high style, their acuity about rising talents and the difficulties of creativity, and – often – their ferocity, when he saw something he thought a blight.They were written with an unstoppable effervescence and expressiveness in language that sent readers hunting down their dictionaries for words like "borborygm Read more ...
Saskia Baron
La Mif is French slang for family - it’s the cool kids practice of reversing key words known as ‘verlan’ (itself l’envers backwards) to create their own language. Director Fred Bailif definitely wants to be down with the kids with this drama that uses many of the tools of documentary filmmaking. Set in a care home for troubled teenagers on the outskirts of Geneva, the cast of feisty girls and well-meaning keyworkers are non-professionals. The script draws on improvisation sessions with the performers, who all have experience of living or working in the care Read more ...
Katie Colombus
It's not every junior dance company that could sell out a house at Sadler's Wells. But NDT2 – younger sibling of one of Europe’s top contemporary dance ensembles, Nederlands Dans Theater, have grown over the last 35 years into a box office blockbuster in their own right.Marco Goecke’s The Big Crying, made shortly after the choreographer's father passed away, opens the evening with a haunting display of virtuosic strength. The dancers’ movements are incessant and frenetic – quick lifts, flicks of the leg and jagged arm gestures are so fast we are barely able to process them, giving a Read more ...