tue 20/05/2025

contemporary dance

Jérôme Bel, Cédric Andrieux, Royal Opera House Linbury Studio

Dance is eating itself. Or dancers are eating themselves, rather. It's on-trend to defy the idea of the mute dancer, and instead have them verbally explaining themselves, their motivation, their art. This year’s Dance Umbrella launched last night...

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DVD: Pina

The clips as you load the DVD show women in extremis - women tied to the end of a rope, women being assaulted by mass male groping, women dancing on pointe with bleeding chunks of meat stuffed into their ballet shoes. Pina Bausch’s commentaries on...

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Go clubbing and running to support planting urban trees

Battersea Park: run a half-marathon there and then go clubbing, all to raise money for planting urban trees

As artificial spaces, clubs struggle to embrace the organic environment. The music and arts collective Noise of Art are bridging the gap by working with the charity Trees for Cities, with DJs donating their time to raise funds for planting trees in...

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Hofesh Shechter, Political Mother: The Choreographer's Cut, Sadler's Wells

Only three years ago, Hofesh Shechter, the Israeli-born, London-based choreographer, made the leap into the big leagues, almost overnight, with his Uprising/In Your Rooms double bill. The following year he produced a "Choreographer’s Cut", a bulked-...

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Coming Up Later at the Old Vic Tunnels

The Old Vic Tunnels won't look like this for the three nights of the Coming Up Festival

It’s not often that a venue’s stage door is easier to find than its main entrance, but The Old Vic Tunnels is one such location. For those behind Coming Up Later, however, this is all part of the fun of a three-evening underground festival...

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Contemporary Dance Weekend, BBC Four

A night in with contemporary dance on telly: Too much explanation

Yesterday was a day when male physicality and the science of movement preoccupied - when you watch Rafa Nadal or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, you can’t help thinking about the contrasts of grace that achieve the same athletic needs; Nadal the pouncing...

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3D Dance looks Skywards with Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake

Last March’s Japanese earthquakes and tsunami, as we know, brought devastation to hundreds of thousands of Japanese. But it also caused a crisis in the 3D film industry, just as it is attempting to be born. The most important 3D tape stock finishing...

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Michael Clark Company, th, Tate Modern

Michael Clark brings dancers into Tate Modern in a long shadow cast by some memorable events from choreographers Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. Now the ground on which Ai Weiwei’s poignant porcelain seeds were piled is swept clean and laid with...

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Dave St-Pierre Company, Un Peu de Tendresse, Sadler's Wells

When asked if I wanted to go and see two dozen naked Canadians doing audience participation, the answer was, self-evidently, nonononononononono. And then, for good measure, NO. Well, I’m here to tell you, I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And I...

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Bern:Ballett, Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House

'Clara', choreographed by Cathy Marston

Being a choreographer is harder than it looks. Steps, movement, are just the beginning. On top of that you need to have a sense of theatricality, and then, even more, you need to be able to convey your ideas, through movement alone, to the...

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Rambert, Cardoon Club/ Roses/ Monolith, Sadler’s Wells

Another of Paul Taylor's masterpieces: 'Roses', in rehearsal

Paul Taylor's Roses is called Roses because, well, because it is. There are no roses here, no flowery sentiment, no overwrought angst and emotion. This, one of Taylor’s most beautifully serene works, is the smell of roses on a still May evening:...

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European Festivals 2011 Round-Up

Be different - take a festival break in Europe instead of the UK, and catch a different landscape. While artists in both new music and classical are constantly circling the world in search of more picturesque settings, you can find your alternative...

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