dance

The Rite of Spring/Petrushka, Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, Sadler's Wells

Matthew Paluch Sunday, 14 April 2013

In String of Rites, Sadler’s Wells has commissioned three works as a tribute to Vaslav Nijinsky’s 1913 Le sacre du printemps. It opened with the Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre’s double bill, The Rite of Spring and Petrushka. Both scores are by Igor Stravinsky, created for the original choreography by Nijinsky and Michel Fokine respectively.

Midnight Express, Peter Schaufuss Ballet, London Coliseum

Ismene Brown Thursday, 11 April 2013

Yok is a fine Turkish word meaning “there isn’t any”. You use it for “no”, as in, say - is Midnight Express any good? Yok.

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Nacho Duato, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London Coliseum

Matthew Paluch Tuesday, 09 April 2013

The Mikhailovsky Ballet closed their epic two-week Coliseum season with modern works by their director, Nacho Duato, presumably hoping to display their capabilities at all dance forms. Multiplicity. Forms of Silence and Emptiness is a work in two acts first created for the Weimar Arts Festival in 1999.

La Bayadère, The Royal Ballet

Ismene Brown Sunday, 07 April 2013

Jane Austen would approve, I think, of the plot of La Bayadère, which is about class and wealth getting in the way of love. She might have difficulty with the setting. It is a grand, exotically located ballet offering us an fantastical India of Rajahs, tiger-hunts and sex-slaves - or rather temple-dancers, whose job is to carry holy water to the needy and put up with the unwanted lust of the High Brahmin.

Laurencia, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London Coliseum

Judith Flanders Wednesday, 03 April 2013

It’s not often you go to a ballet to watch a history lesson unfold, but Laurencia, the 1939 Soviet ballet choreographed by Vakhtang Chabukiani, gives us exactly that, and a gripping one under the froth and fun.

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Don Quixote, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London Coliseum

Judith Flanders Sunday, 31 March 2013

If you want virtuosity, there’s only one place to be in London right now, and that’s watching the Mikhailovsky’s fine production of that demented old warhorse, Don Quixote, with Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev in the leads.

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Giselle, Mikhailovsky Ballet, London Coliseum

Judith Flanders Wednesday, 27 March 2013

When the Bolshoi’s wunderkinder, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, suddenly left the company two years ago, the dance world played endless guessing-games as to where they would end up. It was like Claude Rains in Casablanca: round up the usual suspects.

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Israel Galván/ Farruquito, Flamenco Festival, Sadler's Wells

Ismene Brown Tuesday, 26 March 2013

The annual Sadler’s Wells Flamenco Festival is a hidden treasure-house of brilliance, too quietly sneaking into London in the unappealing limbo between winter and spring, but surely one of the great global gatherings of the dazzling individualists in this mysterious dance form.

theartsdesk in Moscow: Sergei Polunin triumphs in Mayerling

Natalie Wheen Monday, 25 March 2013

Quite simply, the performance was one of those rarest of events in the theatre that will be talked about for generations - the Russian premiere of Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling, with the former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin making his debut as Crown Prince Rudolf.

Aladdin, Birmingham Royal Ballet, London Coliseum

Matthew Paluch Thursday, 21 March 2013

“Possibly the least ‘deep’ ballet I’ve ever made” - these are the words that David Bintley uses to describe his latest full-length work Aladdin, and they make rather a discouraging start to any evening. "Light" isn’t necessarily bad – work created in such a manner can often end up communicating something deeper come their unveiling.