contemporary ballet
Koen Kessels: 'there's a joke in ballet we only have two tempi' - interviewWednesday, 31 May 2017
Koen Kessels is on a mission to change the culture around music in ballet. Anyone who has heard the Belgian conduct will know that he is the right person for the job: Kessels makes the classic scores come alive in the pit like nobody else I’ve heard... Read more... |
Symphonic Dances, Royal Ballet review - a truly interesting creationFriday, 19 May 2017
Liam Scarlett must be worked off his feet. Just at the Royal Ballet, he made a full-length work, Frankenstein, last year and is currently working on a new Swan Lake; and now last night he has premiered a new abstract work, Symphonic Dances at the... Read more... |
Pina Bausch's Rite of Spring, English National Ballet, Sadler's WellsFriday, 24 March 2017
Is English National Ballet's current predilection for acquiring European repertoire some kind of anti-Brexit statement, or just smart brand positioning? Last night's performance at Sadler's Wells, a sequel in all but name to the programme called... Read more... |
Crystal Pite, Flight Pattern, Royal BalletFriday, 17 March 2017
Can thirty minutes of contemporary ballet say something meaningful about the modern refugee crisis? It has been the surprise of the season to find myself asking this question not once, but twice, at the Royal Ballet. In Wayne McGregor's Multiverse,... Read more... |
Tree of Codes, Wayne McGregor, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 08 March 2017
Tree of Codes is a work made from a work made from a work. Based on Jonathan Safran Foer's book-form art piece, which is itself based on Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, Wayne McGregor has fashioned a choreographic creation using a... Read more... |
Akram Khan's Giselle, Sadler's WellsSaturday, 19 November 2016
Thank God for Akram Khan, English National Ballet, and Tamara Rojo. Their new Giselle, which finally arrived at Sadler's Wells this week after its Salford premiere in September, is a work of intelligence, power, beauty, and - most gratifying of all... Read more... |
Wayne McGregor triple bill, Royal BalletFriday, 11 November 2016
"My mission is to create new dance with new music and new design that is intimately plugged in to the world we live in today. I am motivated to make contemporary work that speaks of now and that is totally present-tense," Wayne McGregor explains in... Read more... |
The Taming of the Shrew, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseThursday, 04 August 2016
What do women want? Ballet plots are not the best guide, since the main desiderata – a well-paying job, coffee dates with girlfriends, not to die young of a broken heart – are rarely the lot of ballet heroines. Comedies at least tend to have the not... Read more... |
Swan Lake, Australian Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 14 July 2016
Graeme Murphy's 2002 Swan Lake for Australian Ballet stitches together plot elements from Swan Lake, Giselle and Lucia di Lammermoor, among other things. No bad thing, that; such mash-ups can work well (see Moulin Rouge), and Matthew Bourne proved... Read more... |
Betroffenheit, Sadler's Wells/Ballet BC, Birmingham HippodromeThursday, 02 June 2016
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... Read more... |
The Invitation/Obsidian Tear/Within the Golden Hour, Royal BalletMonday, 30 May 2016
It shows you just how much Kenneth MacMillan changed ballet in this country that 1960's The Invitation, with its onstage rape, sexual grooming and child abuse, can act as the reassuring classic at the heart of the new Royal Ballet triple bill which... Read more... |
Frankenstein, Royal BalletThursday, 05 May 2016
Another year, another new full-length story ballet from one of the Royal Ballet's in-house choreographers. Time was – a long time, in fact, up to 2011 – when that would have sounded like science fiction, but no longer: Liam Scarlett, whose... Read more... |
