dance
Love Tomorrow, Raindance Film FestivalMonday, 08 October 2012
For Darcey Bussell it’s Baryshnikov in The Turning Point; for Carlos Acosta it’s The Red Shoes. No one at last week's starry premiere of Love Tomorrow at the Raindance Film Festival, when I asked them for their favourite dance film, mentioned Black Swan. Read more... |
Akram Khan's Desh, Sadler's WellsThursday, 04 October 2012
I’ve seen Akram Khan’s Desh twice. The first time I sat in my favourite spot – the front row – close enough to smell the sweat drenching his shirt as the demanding physicality of this ambitious solo work became evident. Read more... |
San Francisco Ballet, Balanchine/ Liang/ Wheeldon, Sadler's Wells TheatreSunday, 16 September 2012
It's been eight years since San Francisco Ballet were last here, charming us with their finesse and their smiles - welcome back. They offer a boost of spirit to the gloomsters of ballet over here. This small city which punches many times above its weight in the cultural world owes a vast amount of its self-confidence and charisma to its mixed ethnic roots, so the range of dancers from the Far East via North Europe and the Latino Americas is representative. Read more... |
Art in Action, The Tanks, Tate ModernWednesday, 18 July 2012
You now have two choices when you roll down to the bottom of the Turbine Hall's slope. Read more... |
Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, The Royal BalletSunday, 15 July 2012
The bells ring out for creativity in the Royal Ballet’s final production under its outgoing director, Monica Mason, and the ambition at least of the enterprise is hugely to be cheered, even if asking seven choreographers to work together is on a hiding to nothing. Read more... |
Matthew Bourne's Play Without Words, Sadler's WellsSaturday, 14 July 2012
Sound the trumpets triumphantly - Matthew Bourne’s most original masterpiece has come out of hiding into full view, a giddy, sexy, diabolical confection that hovers on the edge of hellish, and deserves to become a global smash. Read more... |
Stonehenge Fire Garden, Salisbury PlainWednesday, 11 July 2012
Stonehenge, the monumental mystery of Britain’s past, decked out like a laundry yard with drying white vests and flowerpots scattered among its gigantic monoliths. It makes a most disconcerting image, and it is the precursive tableau that the public should not miss if they make the trek out to Salisbury Plain tonight or tomorrow for one of the Cultural Olympiad’s stranger installations. Get there before it all starts. Read more... |
Wiesenland, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsMonday, 09 July 2012
Let us conclude, after London’s season of World Cities - 10 dance shows - that Pina Bausch was not a choreographer. She began 50 years ago in Essen as a ballet dancer and like so many dancers in that field got bored with the rules. When she took over ballet in Wuppertal in 1973, she clearly had rule-breaking in mind but also had something inside her head very different from what one might identify as the geometry of dance. Read more... |
Dance GB, ENB/ NDCWales/ Scottish Ballet, Royal Naval CollegeFriday, 06 July 2012
It was one of the better Olympic culture ideas that Wales, Scotland and England should combine in a Dance GB night, with the three “national” dance companies all creating something new. But a risk that had little Wales holding its breath in fear, up against the might of English National Ballet and Scottish Ballet. And who would have expected the 12-strong National Dance Company Wales to emerge as unexpected heroes? Read more... |
Palermo, Palermo, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 03 July 2012
The curtain rises onto a wall that totally blocks the view. A long silence... then, without warning, the wall collapses – to cheers of delight from the audience. For the rest of the evening, the dancers have to pick their way over rubble strewn across the middle ground that restricts free movement to strips of open space at the front and rear of the stage. Read more... |
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