contemporary dance
Helen Hawkins
The finale of the Royal Ballet’s 2025-26 programming is an extraordinary sight. At the curtain call for Salle de danse, a world premiere from Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, there are so many dancers taking a bow that they have to take turns to come forward, in two different rows, each as wide as the stage. That’s before the conductor and creatives join them.León and Lightfoot’s visit is yet another canny – and generous – piece of scheduling by director Kevin O’Hare, a way to give a sizeable chunk of his company a piece to get their teeth into, with grandstanding turns in the spotlight for many Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Rambert is celebrating its first 100 years with a triple bill that emphasises the youthful vitality of the company. “We’re 100, and we’re just getting started,” they enthusiastically declare. “The next century starts here.” Like many of the best things in Britain, our first dance company was set up by an immigrant – a Polish woman dedicated both to dancing and promoting others. On leaving Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes where she’d danced with Nijinsky, Marie Rambert came to this country in 1914.As a child she was nicknamed “Quicksilver” because she never stopped moving, and on arrival she Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
South Korea’s soft power isn’t restricted to K-pop and K-drama. The latest Festival of Korean Dance, hosted by venues around the UK, is a demonstration that its contemporary dance scene is impressive too.Now in its ninth iteration, this year I caught two of the festival’s programmes, one indie, the other by the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company, who presented a piece on a double bill that was so good, I returned the next night to catch it again.The other offering from the KNCDC, Voyage, could have been from another planet. Indeed, it claims to be inspired by the Voyager spacecraft’s Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
The jury was out when Ballet Nights first made its pitch to the dance-curious – a potential audience, the thinking went, that might be nervous about signing up to the full three-act deal in an opera house but could be tempted by something more akin to a variety show, a curated mix of classical and contemporary with a compère to schmooze them through it. With no item lasting longer than 10 minutes and some as little as three, Ballet Nights would be a tasting menu, in effect, and each would be a one-off event. A nice idea, but is it sustainable? Apparently, yes. Three years on, Ballet Nights Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
If modern and post-modern dance has a reputation for being earnest, then this latest curation of British and American pieces shows another face. For while there is rigour in Yolande Yorke-Edgell’s selection for her fine small company, there is also fun, colour and even louche behaviour. And for all the variety of moods and dynamics of these creations spanning 90 years, a silver thread connects them all. The late Robert Cohan, granddaddy of British contemporary dance, was once a dancer for American modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, and every one of the choreographers presented here has felt Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
“When it comes to a dance roundup, you surely won’t be able to come up with a Top Ten, will you? Even a Top Five might be a stretch”. This from a naysayer who clearly hasn’t been out much this past year. From where we stand, dance looks to have been doing rather well, and this despite the economic strictures we all know about. While it’s true that international touring is not what it was, and ballet fans can no longer get their summer fix from the Russians (and should probably give up hope of seeing a live performance by the Bolshoi or Mariinsky Ballet ever again), the Royal Opera House came Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
As the new season opens, confidence is high at ENB, just as it should be given the roaring success of recent programmes featuring the latest work of iconoclast William Forsythe. His classical steps set to disco raised the roof.The company’s current mixed bill, R:Evolution, also contains some Forsythe, but within a more sober, even academic frame, the idea being to track the evolution of ballet across eight decades: from George Balanchine and Martha Graham – two distinct voices of the 1940s – to a Forsythe classic from 1992, to a grandly conceived new work from internationalist David Dawson. Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
If you have never watched a single episode of the BBC period gangster drama Peaky Blinders, I am not sure what you would make of Rambert’s two-act ballet version. I have watched all six series, and I still left confused. Confused, but also impressed by the five-star standard of the dancing, by the inventive stage pictures created by designer Moi Tran and by the three onstage musicians. Led by lead guitarist/vocalist Mitchel Emms, this trio blast out a score specially written for the piece by Roman GianArthur, alongside tracks featured on the TV show by Radiohead, Frank Carter and the Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The red, white and blue bull’s-eye on the front curtain at Sadler’s Wells tells us we are in the familiar territory of Pete Townshend’s rock musical about teenage angst in 1960s Britain. What follows isn’t so easy to recognise.Quadrophenia started life in 1973 as a double album, and six years later became a film; now it’s a contemporary dance piece with an outstanding cast. Yet it seems to be a case of diminishing returns.The powerful vocals of its songs are silenced, with just a heavenly choir in the closing numbers representing a human presence. And the thrilling axeman chords Read more ...
Florence Roberts
Imagine: you take your seat at the best restaurant in town, the waiter arrives with a flourish to fill your water glass, you hold it out and he pours. And pours, and pours, and pours and pours. The water spills over the rim and splashes into your lap, down your front, over your head. You are left stunned and sopping wet. It is the most exhilarating evening of your life.This is just one provocation among the myriad short études that make up Vollmond, a late work by Pina Bausch and the latest revival from the company now calling itself Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
In an ideal world an end-of-year roundup would applaud only new ventures – fresh productions that you may curse for having missed but whose success would almost certainly ensure a second run.The past 12 months in dance has offered few of these. Instead, it was a year of fine revivals. At a time of tightened belts, tightened as never before, it made sense to programme the tried and tested. There were some novelties, of course, but it was the best of the seen-befores that made the bigger splash.The Royal Ballet, flush with its new status as the dominant company at Covent Garden after 80 years Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
How do you refresh a masterpiece? Bringing back his first and still greatest hit, Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne seems to have changed only minor details since its 1995 premiere at Sadler’s Wells. Its core brilliance is untouched.As usual with Bourne, the production will have been adjusted slightly with each iteration, but it’s possible to compare the 30th anniversary version with the 1995 one, of which handily there is a DVD. The accumulated tweaks are minor. The giant crown hanging in the Prince’s rooms is now a vibrant scarlet, as is the Queen’s ballgown, popping out of her otherwise black Read more ...