Dance
The Rite of Spring & Petrushka, Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, Sadler's WellsSaturday, 12 April 2014
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring captures the pulsing terror of seasonal change, the relentless onward drive of nature that brings death closer even as life burns at its most ferocious. The 1913 première of the ballet created by Vaslav Nijinsky... Read more... |
The Winter's Tale, Royal BalletFriday, 11 April 2014
Another week, another major British ballet company takes on a key cultural patrimony in a brand-new work. It might seem odd that the Royal Ballet’s new Winter’s Tale generates more critical reservations than English National Ballet’s take on... Read more... |
tauberbach, les ballets C de la B, Sadler's WellsThursday, 10 April 2014
Belgian Alain Platel makes the kind of dance theatre (like Pina Bausch, to whom he has an oft-remarked debt) for which both “dance” and “theatre” are very loose and inadequate umbrella terms. “Sets” are often jaw-dropping colonisations of stage... Read more... |
Lest We Forget, English National Ballet, BarbicanThursday, 03 April 2014
Taken together, the memorial accoutrements of the First World War are probably this country's most highly developed, and widely experienced, discourse of public history. Through two-minute silences, poppies, public monuments, and near-univeral... Read more... |
The Prince of the Pagodas, Birmingham Royal Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 27 March 2014
When three good choreographers can’t get a ballet right, there must be something wrong with either the story or the music. In the case of the Prince of the Pagodas (a Poirot mystery waiting to be written, that, but I digress), it’s hardly the music... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Choreographer Hofesh ShechterSaturday, 15 March 2014
Israeli-born choreographer Hofesh Shechter has had a meteoric rise. Ten years ago, he was a dancer in somebody else’s company who had just taken a couple of steps into choreography. Now he has his own full-time company, can pack out Sadler’s Wells... Read more... |
Border Tales, Protein Dance Company, The PlaceFriday, 14 March 2014
Luca Silvestrini paints his contentious look at multiculturalism in Britain in the brash primary colours of stereotyping, allowing little space on the canvas for the light and shade of personal insight. He woefully underuses the experiences of his... Read more... |
Trasmín/Gala Flamenca, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 12 March 2014
In Trasmín, the curtain rises on two bodies leaning apart, yet reaching back to face one other, each columnar figure a twisted into a perfect spiral line from knees to the tips of curved fingers. Their feet are concealed by the great fabric swathes... Read more... |
BBC Ballet SeasonMonday, 10 March 2014
There’s been reasonable diversity in the ballet shown on the BBC in recent years – from full-length broadcasts of Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty and The Red Shoes to the compelling 2011 fly-on-the-wall The Agony and the Ecstasy. That’s why it was... Read more... |
La Pepa, Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras, Sadler's WellsSunday, 02 March 2014
“Goya!” I scribbled enthusiastically in the first moments of La Pepa. “Dos de Mayo! Art as witness to history!” Despite the clichéd use of flickering strobes and a stock “chaotic” soundtrack of shouts and crashes, this opening scene purporting to... Read more... |
TV Preview: BBC Ballet SeasonSaturday, 01 March 2014
Do four programmes constitute a season? Let's not quibble too much; though brief, the ballet season airing on BBC2 and BBC4 this week has some appealing offerings. Judging from the strong focus on famous names (Fonteyn, Bussell) and the best... Read more... |
The Sleeping Beauty, Royal BalletSunday, 23 February 2014
Clement Crisp, veteran ballet critic, once expressed his appreciation for Ashton’s Scènes de Ballet by saying that “if one had to throw ballets off the back of a sleigh, this would be the last to go.” Charming though the train of thought was that... Read more... |
