Dance
Akram Khan, Solos, Sadler's WellsMonday, 16 November 2009
What do you call a dancer with a fractured shoulder and only half a show to offer, who nevertheless takes you to the outer reaches of dance nirvana? It can only be Akram Khan. Now fêted as a (reasonable) contemporary choreographer, the favourite of... Read more... |
Birmingham Royal Ballet, Cyrano, Sadler's WellsFriday, 13 November 2009
Lush, romantic storyballets are as scarce as hens' teeth these days, despite the longing of much of the ballet audience to see them. Not because they're too elementary for today's dancemakers, I'd guess, but because to make one with lively dancing... Read more... |
Duke Bluebeard's Castle/Rite of Spring, ENOSaturday, 07 November 2009
There are horrors in the world so vile that few of us want to think about them. None more so than such cases as Josef Fritzl - or Jaycee Lee Dugard, or Arcedio Alvarez, or Raymond Gouardo, or Wolfgang Priklopil, or Marc Dutroux... but you get the... Read more... |
Agon/ Sphinx/ Limen, Royal BalletThursday, 05 November 2009
Extraordinary lives dancers lead at Covent Garden - in a single day rushing between studios to rehearse the tortured, introspective Mayerling, the pristine classicism of The Sleeping Beauty, the off-centre acrobatics of Balanchine’s Agon and the... Read more... |
Tread Softly/ Carnival of the Animals/ Comedy of Change, Rambert Dance, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 03 November 2009
At its best (ie when it’s not trying to be gimmicky and snare so-called “new audiences”), Rambert is unique in Britain in providing music and dance as theatre. No other company matches it in commitment to this, not even the Royal Ballet, which long... Read more... |
The Sleeping Beauty, Royal BalletSunday, 01 November 2009
Critics did not cover themselves with glory after the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty in St Petersburg on a snowy January night in 1890: “We cannot help regretting the means chosen by the theatre directorate in lowering the standard of artistry of... Read more... |
Psychoanalysing BalletSaturday, 31 October 2009
As a new biography of the Royal Ballet's great choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan by Jann Parry reveals, MacMillan's ballets are often about characters in shadowy explorations of inner states of mind. In part, his willingness to portray loneliness... Read more... |
Mark Morris Dance Group, Sadler's Wells & touringTuesday, 27 October 2009
I try to remember when I first saw Mark Morris’s dance company and what I thought of them. Fairly weird, I recall - like chubby church-goers, with their big bottoms, fleshy arms and homespun cheeriness, not remotely part of the sharp-boned,... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Duke Bluebeard's Castle, The Rite of Spring, ENOTuesday, 27 October 2009
theartsdesk's podcasts with broadcaster Edward Seckerson continue with a look at the English National Opera's new production of two 20th-century masterpieces: Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Daniel Kramer takes... Read more... |
Morphoses prog B, Sadler's WellsSaturday, 24 October 2009
In the Ballets Russes centenary year it’s worth remembering that the iconic Diaghilev ballets were only the few lasting landmarks in a sea of constant novelties and shipwrecks. So if Christopher Wheeldon doesn’t take many great reviews back to the... Read more... |
Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, Queen Elizabeth HallThursday, 22 October 2009It was a weird experience to get home from last night’s performance by Shobana Jeyasingh’s dance company to find Nick Griffin on TV defending his view of “indigenous” Britons. There’s a vigorous stratum of British contemporary dance that could come... Read more... |
Morphoses, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 21 October 2009
Britain’s favourite ballet choreographer Chris Wheeldon rode into his homeland last night, bringing with his Anglo-American company Morphoses work by himself and by Britain’s second favourite ballet choreographer Alexei Ratmansky. Two favourites... Read more... |
