Dance
Don Quixote, Royal Ballet review - crazy Russian-Spanish romcom, brilliant dancingFriday, 06 October 2023
It was Carlos Acosta’s new production of Don Quixote that launched the Royal Ballet season in the autumn of 2013, and as it does so again 10 years on, its sunny dynamism is just what the doctor ordered.Don Q, as it’s known to ballet fans, can be an... Read more... |
Ballet Nights, Lanterns Studio Theatre review - dance gets its own cabaret seasonWednesday, 04 October 2023
The variety show format is hardly new to concert programming. In the early 1900s it was the norm. Go to hear a Beethoven piano sonata or the latest piece by Claude Debussy and you could expect it to be followed by a novelty item on the fiddle, a... Read more... |
Black Sabbath: The Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham Hippodrome review - two very different art forms mergeFriday, 29 September 2023
These days Black Sabbath aren’t short of admirers in the arts and even further afield. Artists as disparate as veteran soul man, Charles Bradley and Scandi popsters the Cardigans have covered their songs – and then there’s Jazz Sabbath, who do... Read more... |
Ailey 2, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury review - young, black and fabulousWednesday, 27 September 2023
Dance lovers with no access to a major city could feel genuinely hard done by were it not for Dance Consortium. This sainted organisation works to bring a company from overseas each autumn to a dozen or so large-scale theatres across the UK and... Read more... |
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Sadler's Wells review - exhilarating display of a full deck of dance stylesSaturday, 09 September 2023
A big welcome awaited the Alvin Ailey dancers at the Wells, on their first international tour since lockdown. The company has scheduled four different mixed bills over 10 days, each with its signature piece, Revelations, as the finale. This is a... Read more... |
Matthew Bourne's Romeo + Juliet, Sadler's Wells review - exhilarating dancing, inventive movesMonday, 07 August 2023
Matthew Bourne regularly revamps the first version of a new piece so that by the second go-round it really zings. For the return of his 2019 Romeo + Juliet, though, very little has changed, yet it feels refreshed.Dramaturgically, it’s still a bit... Read more... |
Jewels, The Australian Ballet, Royal Opera House review - a sparkling parade of great dancingFriday, 04 August 2023
Every time you see Jewels, George Balanchine’s masterpiece from 1967, something new emerges from its treasure trove. What the Australian Ballet pleasurably bring to the fore is its playful, and play-acting, side.The story of how Balanchine came to... Read more... |
Carlos at 50, Royal Opera House review - lovingly designed gala from a still impressive starThursday, 27 July 2023
On the day Mick Jagger turned 80, that spring chicken Carlos Acosta, 50 this year, returned to the stage of the Royal Opera House, which he had left in 2015 after 17 years. Carlos at 50 was a wonderfully sunny, warm embrace of a return: the audience... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Ravenna Festival - invisible cities and possible dreamsMonday, 17 July 2023
Came for the music, returned for the theatre. I oversimplify: Riccardo Muti’s Roads of Friendship events, meetings of his Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra with players from other places – since 1997, they have included Sarajevo, Lebanon, Kenya, Iran... Read more... |
Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras, Sadler's Wells - a roaring start to the Flamenco FestivalSaturday, 08 July 2023
When flamenco first came out of the shadows and started to fill big theatres, it was like something out of a historical pageant. The shows that played London in the early 1990s harked back to an imagined gypsy past where old men hammered rhythms on... Read more... |
Untitled, 2023 / Corybantic Games / Anastasia Act III, Royal Ballet review - a magnificent end to the seasonSaturday, 17 June 2023
Is it a cop-out for an artist to label a piece of work “Untitled”? Painters and sculptors make a habit of it, reasoning that they want to leave the viewer free to bring to the experience what they will, unhampered and unlimited by prior information... Read more... |
Requiem, Opera North review - partnership and diversityWednesday, 31 May 2023
Innovation is always a risky business. Opera North’s vision and ambition for this production is to create, in effect, a new genre: a combination of staged choral-orchestral performance with contemporary dance.Partnership and diversity are the buzz... Read more... |
