dance
Petrushka/ Song of a Wayfarer/ Raymonda, English National Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 26 July 2013
A magical folktale, a male duet, a classical jewel-box - programmes like this should be a rich part of the warp and weft of a ballet company, a night of rich interest and variety, stimulating dancers with challenges to their grace and storytelling skills. That it comes as the briefest glimpse in English National Ballet’s year is truly a pity, especially as it pays tribute to that superlative catalyst in ballet, Rudolf Nureyev. Read more... |
Prom 17: Antonio Márquez Company, BBC Philharmonic, MenaFriday, 26 July 2013
JThis year’s Proms have been accompanied by an unusual choral drone, a monotony of voices whinging about the prodigious heat at the Albert Hall. For one night only no one was complaining as the temperature gauge went up to something like 111. You’ve heard of the Hollywood Prom and Comedy Prom, the Gospel Prom and the Dalek Prom. Read more... |
Quimeras, Paco Peña and Dance CompaniesSunday, 14 July 2013
Happy truisms first: Paco Peña is still the greatest of flamenco guitarists, he works with a consummate team of regulars in the most vibrant of dance-art and he keeps it fresh by scouring the world for different players or ensembles to complement his own flamencistas. I’ll never forget equal artists Venezuelan Diego Alvarez, creating miracles from the simple plywood box with vibrating strings known as the cajón, and on this occasion the breathtaking Senegalese dancer Alboury Dabo. Read more... |
Coppélia, Stanislavsky Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 12 July 2013
When a person is happy in his work, he does his best. So best ignore what Sergei Polunin says on the page of a newspaper and look at what he does on stage. Now there’s a happy boy. Read more... |
Boston Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 05 July 2013
In a summer awash with Russian ballet, at its best extravagant, limpid, spectacular - an experience of emotions processed through the eyes - a visit by an American company comes from a quite different sensory position: dance as intelligent motion, rhythmically schooled athleticism. Read more... |
Rosas, Drumming/ The Forsythe Company, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 26 June 2013
William Forsythe and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker in a week - it has to be Sadler’s Wells, the theatre to sample some of the world’s best dance stuff. De Keersmaeker’s Rosas are briefly here to take part in Sadler’s "Sampled", a new thread of summer performances surrounding a single famous piece with chat, film, interactivity and other related things. Read more... |
Mayerling, Royal BalletSunday, 16 June 2013
My great-grandmother used to say, "In the fall, leaves fall," meaning that as the weather gets colder, people die. The Royal Ballet has had leaves falling all year, and in the height of the (ha!) summer one of the most tenacious, and most beautiful, finally fluttered down. Leanne Benjamin, a principal since 1993, retired in the role of her choosing, Kenneth MacMillan’s Mary Vetsera, a crazed, sexed-up nymphet with a death-wish. Read more... |
Swan Lake, English National Ballet, Royal Albert HallThursday, 13 June 2013
So much is wrong with Derek Deane’s arena Swan Lake, as if he read a poem and rewrote it as a press release. If you want big fat images of swans, 60 white-feathered girls in precision-tooled lines, this is for you. Take your photos on your phone, take them home and say, “I was there.” If you want to feel the private passion of the story, surrender to the music and the peculiar fantasy, to examine your own motivations and ability to choose love, forget this - go elsewhere. Read more... |
Mayerling, The Royal BalletThursday, 06 June 2013
So last night the Royal Ballet’s first couple, at shockingly short notice, gave their last performance with the company, in MacMillan’s Mayerling, a terrifying, piteous experience that I know I’ll never see surpassed. Johan Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru have blessed this millennium, both artists who used the lightness of their natural physical abilities to tear into dark emotional places, and who last night tore the Royal Opera House’s sell-out crowd apart. Read more... |
iTMOi, Akram Khan Company, Sadler's Wells TheatreFriday, 31 May 2013
When the public “got” or did not “get” the original Rite of Spring of Nijinsky and Stravinsky exactly 100 years ago this week, they couldn't call on emotional logic or aesthetic familiarity or symbolic recognition to help. Only imaginative reflex could cause some people to describe in words (the “fearful regrouping of the cells”) or pictures (Valentine Gross’s vivid, instant pencil sketches) what the iconoclastic piece felt like to experience. Read more... |
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