Dance
La Strada, Sadler's Wells review - a long and bumpy roadThursday, 01 February 2024
Federico Fellini’s 1954 classic La Strada ought to be a gift to a choreographer. The film has pathos, good and evil, a bewitchingly gamine heroine, and incidental music by the great Nino Rota, a composer who can find melancholy in the music of... Read more... |
First Person: pioneering juggler Sean Gandini reflects on how the spirit of Pina Bausch has infiltrated his workTuesday, 30 January 2024
I am a juggler. My wife Kati Ylä-Hokkala is also a juggler. Our life for the last three decades has been juggling. We have been fortunate to be practising this art form at a time when mathematical and creative developments meant that our vocabulary... Read more... |
Manon, Royal Ballet review - a glorious half-century revival of a modern classicTuesday, 23 January 2024
It’s 50 years since the first, damning reviews of Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet Manon declared it to be too long and lumbered with terrible music. One of them also said that the title role was an appalling waste of the ballerina who, in the title role... Read more... |
Giselle, English National Ballet, Coliseum review - if you go down to the woods today, beware of the WilisTuesday, 16 January 2024
We’re used to the idea of 19th century ballets being updated, but the Giselle currently presented by English National Ballet takes it the other way.This production, itself more than 50 years old, offers the closest possible experience of a Romantic... Read more... |
Best of 2023: DanceTuesday, 02 January 2024
Dance lovers have had a better time of it this year as the performance sector starts to find its feet again. In the wake of a general cull of independent dance companies, 2023 has seen signs of fresh growth.Lively enterprises have sprouted in... Read more... |
Edward Scissorhands, Sadler's Wells review - a true Christmas treat, witty and beguilingTuesday, 19 December 2023
The story of Edward Scissorhands may not seem an obvious Christmas subject, but it couldn’t be a more overt call for goodwill to all men. And there’s a hint of The Nutcracker about Matthew Bourne’s dance version, too.Created in 2005 and last seen in... Read more... |
Nutcracker, Tuff Nutt Jazz Club, Royal Festival Hall review - a fresh, compelling, adult take on a festive favouriteWednesday, 13 December 2023
Intimacy isn’t everything, but there’s nothing like seeing dance live and up close. A good seat in a large theatre will give you the whole stage picture but lose the detail. Lost too will be that quasi-visceral connection with the movement.A... Read more... |
The Dante Project, Royal Ballet review - brave but flawed take on the Divine Comedy returnsMonday, 27 November 2023
Singular in its variousness, this is a three-act ballet that need some unpicking. No wonder those hooked on first acquaintance in 2021, like theartsdesk’s dance critic Jenny Gilbert, have been back to see it more than once.So long as you accept that... Read more... |
The Limit, Linbury Theatre review - a dance-theatre romcom that lacks both rom and comTuesday, 31 October 2023
Imagine a world in which speech has a daily legal limit. Not a limit on what you say, but how many words it takes to say it. Now imagine how such a scenario might work as dance.Adaptations are so common on the theatre stage that the change of state... Read more... |
Anemoi / The Cellist, Royal Ballet review - a feast of music in a neat double billWednesday, 25 October 2023
Double bills at the ballet don’t often come as neatly gift-wrapped. Each of the works in question was made just before or during lockdown, arriving at its premiere by the skin of its teeth. Each went on to win a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award... Read more... |
Song of Songs, Pam Tanowitz/David Lang, Barbican Theatre review - sublime music and intricate dance bring life to a 2,000-year-old love poemMonday, 16 October 2023
On the whole the Bible is not big on sex and sensuality, with the exception of one very short book in the Old Testament. The Song of Solomon – aka Song of Songs – is a hymn to carnal pleasure, one whose vivid descriptions of perfect flesh and... Read more... |
First Person: Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang on the original Jewish love storyThursday, 12 October 2023
I wouldn’t say that I am super religious, but I am definitely religion-curious. It is a big part of my family background, and, to be honest, a big part of the history of my chosen field, Western classical music. For the past 1000 years, the... Read more... |
