history of dance
The Thread, Sadler's Wells Digital Stage review - Greek folk and contemporary uniteMonday, 20 April 2020
The latest Sadler’s Wells digital offering is 2019’s The Thread, a luminous collaboration between choreographer Russell Maliphant and Oscar-winning composer Vangelis (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner) for the Athens-based production company Lavris. It... Read more... |
Sacre, Sasha Waltz and Guests, Sadler's WellsFriday, 13 November 2015
What dancemaker wouldn't want to tackle Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) at some point? Just as the Stravinsky score changed music, the original Ballets Russes production changed dance - and was then, conveniently, so completely forgotten... Read more... |
The King Who Invented Ballet, BBC FourMonday, 14 September 2015
Someone more unlike Louis XIV than David Bintley is hard to imagine. The latter comes across on TV as the most pleasant, unthreatening, mild-mannered of Everymen; unthinkable that he would order the massacre of Protestants or proclaim, “l’État, c’... Read more... |
An Open Book: Michael HullsSaturday, 05 September 2015
The occupation “lighting designer” is too workaday to describe Michael Hulls. The artistry with which he casts illumination or shadow on some of the great dancers of our time make the idea of switches and bulb wattage seem humdrum. Pellucid,... Read more... |
Daphnis et Églé/La Naissance d'Osiris, Les Arts Florissants, Christie, BarbicanWednesday, 19 November 2014
Were it not for William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, the vocal and instrumental ensemble he started in Paris in the 1970s, the beauties of the musical French Baroque might have remained a dusty fact of pre-Revolutionary history. As it is,... Read more... |
Dancing Cheek to Cheek, BBC FourTuesday, 18 November 2014
I am picturing a scene in BBC4’s highly fortified underground headquarters, a conversation between its mastermind-in-chief and a hapless minion. “What do we do well, Stanley?” “History documentaries, boss.” “And what do people, according to... Read more... |
How Ratmansky exited the Bolshoi, in FlamesMonday, 19 August 2013
The Flames of Paris, given its London premiere by the Bolshoi Ballet this weekend, was Alexei Ratmansky's farewell present to the Moscow company which he directed from 2004 to 2008. In his final months at the Bolshoi he talked with me in his office... Read more... |
Still Shocking - The Rite of Spring 100 Years OnMonday, 01 April 2013
Victims driven to death by the mob, women and men violently rutting in animal costumes, a black comedy about a snatched baby, a naked man dancing alone in his own fantasy - many and varied are the images in the nearly 200 danceworks created to the... Read more... |
10 Questions for Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo's leader Tory DobrinTuesday, 12 February 2013
The bristling chest, the suggestive swell under the feathered crotch, the leering lipsticked mouth, the size 12 pink pointe shoes. Even the name of the troupe tickles the ribs, so serious yet so ridiculous. What's a camp word like Trockadero doing... Read more... |
Black-Out Ballet: The Invisible Woman of British BalletTuesday, 11 December 2012
In 2006 an elderly dancer died in Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex. She was 88, and had once been one of Britain's most recognised ballerinas. Why did she die in obscurity? Why is the great ballet company that she ran now a forgotten name? This was what I set... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Choreographer & Ballet-Restorer Pierre LacotteSaturday, 10 November 2012
On 25 November cinemas all over Britain and overseas will host a live relay from the Bolshoi Ballet of a rampantly OTT and enormously entertaining ballet set in ancient Egypt, The Pharaoh's Daughter. It has mummies coming to life, English tourists... Read more... |
Rambert Dance, Sadler's Wells/ Michael Clark Company, Barbican TheatreFriday, 19 October 2012
Waves of modern dance history beat upon the shore this week with Rambert at Sadler’s Wells offering four works going back nearly 40 years, and Michael Clark’s newest Britdance creation at the Barbican. The hip people will be at the Barbican, of... Read more... |
- 1 of 4
- ››
