contemporary dance
Jenny Gilbert
There’s more than a touch of vaunting ambition in the idea of turning the Scottish Play into dance theatre. Without spoken text, named scenes or even a printed synopsis, it falls to choreography and direction to speak for them all. Thus the most striking achievement of Mark Bruce’s small-scale touring production of Macbeth is that it delivers the story with a clarity and vibrancy that communicates, whatever one's level of acquaintance with Shakespeare. What’s more, its best moments – which come thick and fast in the second half – are as thrilling as it gets on any size of stage.The grand Read more ...
theartsdesk
With forelock-tugging celebrations of a choreographer who died 25 years ago and a summer visit by the Mariinsky the highest-profile events in the calendar, 2017 may not be remembered as a vintage year for British dance. But there were striking moments aplenty if you knew where to look for them, and companies, directors and dancers making magic even in ordinary circumstances. As the year ends, theartsdesk correspondents cast their minds back and pick out the best of those magical moments. As always, the criterion is memorability: this is not a comprehensive review of who was worthy or Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Even if Matthew Bourne were never to choreograph another step, he could fill theatres in perpetuity by rotating old stock. Cinderella, made in 1997, was the follow-up to his break-out hit Swan Lake but, never quite happy with it, he reworked it in 2010, replacing the musicians in the pit with a custom-made recording of an 82-piece orchestra. It’s this version that now appears, slated to follow its London dates with an exhaustive UK tour. At least now no-one in Milton Keynes or Sheffield can complain that the regions are shortchanged by getting piped music. Everyone is. Elevated to the status Read more ...
Sanjoy Roy
Where does my voice come from? Whose is my body? It’s apt that these questions run deep through a work that was created jointly by an actor, Jonathon Young, and a choreographer, Crystal Pite. The faultlines between body, voice and person are everywhere in Betroffenheit, which opened at Sadler's Wells last night, a dance theatre piece that delves deep into the psychology of trauma. The work’s origins are profoundly personal – the death of Young’s teenage daughter and her two cousins in a fire – yet Betroffenheit (the word means “a state of shock”) is not so much about this event as a Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Not every artist attains the kind of status that will allow their early works to be revived – or, when revived, greeted with commercial and critical success. This is something of a shame for those of us with a historical mindset who like seeing where an artist has come from and how they have developed. Of course, some things are best left in a box under the bed with your teenage diaries, but Early Adventures, a tight selection of Matthew Bourne works from 1989-1991 which opened last night at Sadler's Wells, is not one of them.The Infernal Galop and Town & Country, both shown in the Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Before this Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival-opening performance of Israel Galván's show FLA.CO.MEN, my guest wanted to know what the show would be like. And if I struggled lamely for words in response, it wasn't because I thought it would be bad – au contraire – but because Galván tends to defy both prediction and description.The 90 minutes that followed proved that any prophecy would indeed have been a waste of breath. He smashes a ceramic flamenco boot (after playing it like a flute). He pretends to read his dance steps off a score on a music stand, while wearing a chef's Read more ...
Ismene Brown
An inviting gap in the market, a dark, mysterious place, was left beckoning when the dance theatres of Britain cashed in on expensive refurbs in the name of public accessibility. Putting an end to mystique, they homed in on IKEA style, all glass, pale wood and airport foyer briskness. The theatre as a continuum with our office space, blank, unprejudicing, unintoxicating, all about efficiency and the bottom line.When I was an usherette at Covent Garden, huddled cloakrooms and elvish bars could be found around every corner, each a tiny fierce kingdom ruled by an outsize ego – Irish Paddy in one Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Why does Natalia Osipova, one of the world's best classical, dramatic ballerinas, want to start a sideline in contemporary dance in the middle of her career? Two years ago, when she mounted her first self-commissioned contemporary triple bill with her then newly-ex-fiancée Ivan Vasiliev, I was willing to believe that it was for the love of trying new things, pushing her own boundaries, and taking all aspects of her artform seriously.Though that show delivered two utterly forgettable pieces alongside the memorably black Facada by Arthur Pita, Osipova herself admitted that she had Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
I could tell you what the German word "Betroffenheit" means by giving a dictionary definition, etymology and connotations and so on. But I won't, because this dance-drama hybrid by Jonathan Young and Crystal Pite is precisely not about pinning down definitions or making sense through words in a descriptive, iterative sort of way, but about capturing feelings or states of being in a much more metaphorical, experiential, immersive way. Betroffenheit is in one sense, then, the feeling you have after watching the show Betroffenheit.But it started from a very specific and personal experience. In Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Hearing that both Javier de Frutos and rabbit heads appear in the new BalletBoyz bill might give you pause. A choreographer so unafraid of graphic content that he started his career with naked one-man shows, and later made a piece about the Pope so sexually explicit and offensive that he got death threats – do the rabbit heads mean we're in for some kind of furvert orgy?Well, the rabbit heads turn out to be in the double bill's other half, Rabbit by Swedish choreographer Pontus Lidberg, and it's not exactly Like Rabbits. The piece opens and closes with a longing pas de deux, the first Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
International Dance Festival Birmingham (IDFB) is one of the unsung heroes not just of dance in Britain, but of festivals. It treats anyone within striking distance of the West Midlands to an exciting range of performers and public dance events over three weeks, and is cleverly scheduled in May – when lengthening days and bank holidays make us want to go out and have a good time, but it's not quite warm enough for camping. With IDFB 2016 opening in three weeks, on Sunday 1 May, theartsdesk casts an eye over the programme's highlights and finds out from festival founder and director David Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Charles Linehan is an acclaimed British choreographer, whose company has performed all over the world, from DanSpace New York to Brussels’ Kaai Theatre to the Venice Biennale. Born in Cyprus and raised in Kent, he studied at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, prior to honing his craft as a dancer with various European companies.The Charles Linehan Dance Company appeared in 1994 and he became choreographer-in-residence at both The Place and the South Bank Centre, also winning the 1998 Jerwood Choreography Award. He moved to Berlin in 2011 for two years but returned to the UK Read more ...