thu 19/06/2025

Ismene Brown

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Bio
Dr Ismene Brown designed and launched the original version of The Arts Desk in 2009, and was the Site Coordinator and a board director for three years, as well as its dance editor. A musician trained at the Royal College of Music, she has been dance critic for the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator, and has also written for TAD on classical music, theatre, TV and film. Since then she has gained an MA at UCL and DPhil at Oxford University for work on the Soviet politician and arts minister Ekaterina Furtseva.

Articles By Ismene Brown

RIP dancer and photographer Colin Jones - obituary

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Leopards, Rose Theatre, Kingston review - a no-thrill thriller about sex and power

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Constellations, Vaudeville Theatre review - multiple casts continue to shine

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Hamlet, Windsor Theatre Royal review - the age is out of joint

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'She was Paris': RIP Zizi Jeanmaire (1924-2020)

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The deathless Alicia Alonso, in person

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Elisabeth Leonskaja, Wigmore Hall review - Mozart and Webern, anyone?

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Macbeth, National Theatre - Rufus Norris goes for drab, gory and tricksy

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Long Day's Journey Into Night, Wyndham's Theatre review - Lesley Manville hits ecstatic, fatal highs

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Bolshoi's controversial Nureyev ballet opens – to ovations and bans

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The Seagull, Lyric Hammersmith review – is Lesley Sharp's Irina a sex addict?

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The March on Russia, Orange Tree Theatre review – vividly funny amid the bleakness

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Otello, Royal Opera review — Kaufmann makes a pretty Moor

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Sergei Vikharev, master ballet-reconstructor, 1962-2017

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Hipermestra / La Traviata, Glyndebourne

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Three Sisters, Sovremennik review - over-conscious of its legendariness

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latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
The Midnight Bell, Sadler's Wells review - a first repr...

Rarely has a revival given a firmer thumbs-up for the future of dance-theatre. Yet Matthew Bourne’s latest show, first aired at the tail-end of...

Album: HAIM - I Quit

Haim’s profile just grows and grows. Since their last album, youngest sibling Alana’s starring role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s whimsical Seventies...

Aldeburgh Festival, Weekend 1 review - dance to the music of...

This year’s Aldeburgh Festival – the 76th – takes as its motto a line from Shelley‘s Prometheus Unbound. The poet speaks of despair “...

Bonnie Raitt, Brighton Dome review - a top night with a char...

If you walked into a bar in the US, say in one of the southern states, and Bonnie Raitt and her band were playing, you’d have the best night of...

Hidden Door Festival 2025 review - the transformative Edinbu...

"When I was your age, I worked in a corrugated cardboard factory!" is a phrase my father was fond of telling me as a teenager, presumably in an...

Edward Burra, Tate Britain review - watercolour made mainstr...

It’s unusual to leave an exhibition liking an artist’s work less than when you went in, but...

Joyceana around Bloomsday, Dublin review - flawless adaptati...

It amuses me that Dubliners dress up in Edwardian finery on 16 June. After all, this was the date in 1904 when James Joyce first walked out with...

Stereophonic, Duke of York's Theatre review - rich slic...

The tag “the most Tony-nominated play of all time” may mean less to London theatregoers than it does to New Yorkers, but Stereophonic,...