sat 01/04/2023

dance theatre

Ruination, Linbury Theatre review - Medea gets a makeover

At a time when every other theatre is offering an alternative Christmas show, what to make of the Royal Opera House’s first collaboration with Lost Dog, aka director-choreographer Ben Duke, who has come up with the most un-merry topic imaginable?...

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Room, Edinburgh International Festival 2022 review - decadent, extravagant, and somewhat mystifying

"I feel I owe you an explanation." That much James Thierrée concedes partway through his sprawling, freewheeling, dream-like, hallucinatory Room in Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre. By which stage, most of the audience was probably in agreement. It’s a...

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The Car Man, Royal Albert Hall review - grand scale drama and decadence

Ever since his re-staging of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne has managed to update the art of storytelling through dance steps and gesture in a way that others have struggled to achieve.This new re-working of his 2000 dance-noir, The Car Man...

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NDT2, Sadler's Wells review - a diverse triple bill

It's not every junior dance company that could sell out a house at Sadler's Wells. But NDT2 – younger sibling of one of Europe’s top contemporary dance ensembles, Nederlands Dans Theater, have grown over the last 35 years into a box office...

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Saturday Night Fever, Peacock Theatre review - crowd-pleaser stays true to its roots

Wind the clock back 45 years and the Big Apple was bankrupt, the lights had gone out and many native New Yorkers were packing their bags. Gangs controlled whole neighbourhoods, drugs were the currency of choice and, for a kid with no college,...

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L'Heure Exquise, Linbury Theatre review - an exquisite tragedy in miniature

Ballet dancers, even the greatest, don’t expect longevity. There are no Maggie Smiths or Helen Mirrens in the ballet world – there just aren’t the roles. So the news that Alessandra Ferri was to mark the 40th anniversary of her association with the...

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Album: Raf Rundell - O.M. Days

The career of Raf Rundell has had one of the most satisfying trajectories of any in UK music – a steady process of self-realisation, from record label staff via DJing and artist management, through being a serial studio collaborator, to becoming a...

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Dua Lipa's Studio 2054 online - pop sensation locked into the spectacle

As with so much in these unprecedented times, online performance is evolving, and fast: different approaches are becoming established formats. Some go ultra intimate – raw acoustic performances, live chats with fans – as if trying to strip away the...

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Blu-ray/DVD: Dance, Girl, Dance

RKO’s Dance, Girl, Dance was remarkable as a vehicle for two emerging stars, Maureen O’Hara and Lucille Ball, that stealthily radicalised its backstage setting and tried to slap moviegoers out of their comfort zone – probably the reason it...

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Cats, The Shows Must Go On review - a purr-fectly theatrical experience

Cats is, declares composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, a show that doesn’t really have a story, but was beloved on stage because it’s “the ultimate theatrical experience”. That’s the point which Tom Hooper’s grotesque, nightmarish movie adaptation so...

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Rumpelstiltskin, Sadler's Wells Digital Stage review - spins an engaging yarn for young audiences

The latest in Sadler’s Wells’ Digital Stage programme – an impressively assembled online offering to keep audiences entertained during the shutdown – is balletLORENT’s family-friendly dance-theatre production Rumpelstiltskin. It was...

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Michael Keegan-Dolan, MÁM, Sadler's Wells review - folk goes radical

The Dingle Peninsula is a thumb of land that protrudes into the Atlantic as if trying to hitch a ride from Ireland to America. The choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan recently moved there, and its crags and vales and unspoilt coast have sucked him...

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