mon 10/02/2025

dance

Phaedra + Minotaur, Royal Ballet and Opera, Linbury Theatre review - a double dose of Greek myth

Jenny Gilbert

Greek myths are all over theatre stages at the moment, their fierce, vengeful stories offering unnerving parallels with events in our modern world. The latest such project is a pithy double bill of opera and dance, both halves (though the first lasts only 20 minutes) featuring the half-man, half-bull Minotaur, and the havoc he wreaks, even in death.

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Onegin, Royal Ballet review - a poignant lesson about the perils of youth

Jenny Gilbert

It would be hard to find an antihero more anti than Eugene Onegin. The protagonist of Alexander Pushkin’s long verse novel of 1833 is a wrecker of lives. Charismatically handsome yet arrogant, cynical and bored, his effect on those who fall under his spell is toxic. And yet in the mid-1960s his story suggested itself as material for a ballet so luminous and compelling that it has outlived its choreographer by more than half a century.

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Northern Ballet: Three Short Ballets, Linbury Theatre review - thrilling dancing in a mix of styles

Helen Hawkins

Leeds-based Northern Ballet has built a reputation as a source of fine dancers who are also impressive actors. Federico Bonelli, the former Royal Ballet principal who took over its directorship in 2022, is proving a worthy steward of this tradition. 

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Best of 2024: Dance

Jenny Gilbert

In an ideal world an end-of-year roundup would applaud only new ventures – fresh productions that you may curse for having missed but whose success would almost certainly ensure a second run.

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Nutcracker, English National Ballet, Coliseum review - Tchaikovsky and his sweet tooth rule supreme

Jenny Gilbert

No new production of a beloved old ballet can please everyone, and there is none more beloved, or more frequently produced, than The Nutcracker. English National Ballet has staked its identity on performing Tchaikovsky’s last, most hummable and most festive ballet every Christmas since 1950, turning out a fresh reading every few years.

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Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, New Adventures, Sadler's Wells review - 30 years on, as bold and brilliant as ever

Helen Hawkins

How do you refresh a masterpiece? Bringing back his first and still greatest hit, Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne seems to have changed only minor details since its 1995 premiere at Sadler’s Wells. Its core brilliance is untouched.

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Ballet Shoes, Olivier Theatre review - reimagined classic with a lively contemporary feel

Helen Hawkins

Those with treasured battered copies of Noel Streatfield’s 1936 story of three young adopted sisters in pre-war London may have thrilled to the idea of a version coming to the National Theatre. But be warned: jolly though it is, it’s not the story of stagestruck pre-war Londoners you know.

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Cinderella, Royal Ballet review - inspiring dancing, but not quite casting the desired spell

Helen Hawkins

Romeo and Juliet or Cinderella? Prokofiev’s two great scores have provided the Royal Ballet with a pair of popular hits, though Macmillan’s R&J has probably been the bigger draw, its Capulets ball music sampled everywhere from TV commercials to Sunderland FC’s pre-match stadium anthem.

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Akram Khan, GIGENIS, Sadler’s Wells review - now 50, Khan returns to his roots

Jenny Gilbert

London-born Akram Khan has come a long way in a 35-year career. He performed as a young teen in Peter Brook’s production of The Mahabharata, then progressed to dance training first in kathak then in contemporary dance.

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Maddaddam, Royal Ballet review - superb dancing in a confusing frame

Helen Hawkins

Valiant souls who have recently read the Margaret Atwood trilogy on which this new Wayne McGregor piece for the Royal Ballet is based will be at home with its time-shifting eco-sci-fi narrative. The rest of us, not so much.

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