dance theatre
Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Sadler's WellsFriday, 13 December 2013![]() In 1995 a new avian species with unfamiliar markings, the Bourne swan, drew unexpectedly large crowds to a run-down old Islington theatre. I remember it well: seats in the gods were being worn so tight then that feet attached to long legs couldn't... Read more... |
Sadler's Wells, 2014 Highlights announcedTuesday, 05 November 2013Crystal Pite returns to Sadler's Wells as their 16th Associate Artist, with a UK premiere of her The Tempest Replica, in April.29-30 January: Borish Charmatz's enfant.7-16 February: Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch returns with 1980: A Piece by... Read more... |
Sadler’s Wells, Ambitious New PlansTuesday, 05 November 2013Alastair Spalding, Sadler’s Wells’ Chief Executive and Artistic Director, today announced that the theatre is looking for a fourth London venue, which it hopes will open in just four years’ time.Not content with two proscenium spaces (the main stage... Read more... |
Dracula, Mark Bruce Company, Tobacco Factory, BristolSaturday, 28 September 2013![]() The rich cocktail of sex, bestiality and possession that lies at the heart of the vampire myth is a perennial crowd-pleaser, a surefire frightener set in an all-too-familiar discomfort zone. Mark Bruce’s rich and reference-laden take on Bram Stoker’... Read more... |
Hofesh Shechter/ Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Puz/zle, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 30 April 2013![]() I was trying to remember the last time a choreographer actually tried to make the audience smile in the past few months. Dance-lovers are suckers for guilt. They creep into the dark of their seat to be regaled by their share of the blame for the... Read more... |
Mies Julie, Riverside StudiosTuesday, 12 March 2013Snow flurries outside, steam heat within. Writer-director Yael Farber’s transposition of Strindberg from a 19th-century Swedish estate to a contemporary farm in South Africa’s Karoo region on the eve of a storm is so painstakingly evocative that all... Read more... |
Onegin, Royal BalletSunday, 20 January 2013![]() The worldwide success of John Cranko’s 1960s version of Tchaikovsky’s opera, in turn an adaptation of Pushkin’s verse-drama, might have taken even the choreographer by surprise. Tchaikovsky himself worried that “Pushkin’s exquisite texture will be... Read more... |
DVD: Fairy Tales, Early Colour Stencil Films From PathéFriday, 07 December 2012![]() Although it's impossible to place yourself in the shoes of audiences seeing these other-worldly short films at the dawn of the 20th century, the reaction they provoke now cannot be that different. Delight, surprise and then amazement. These films... Read more... |
Cesena, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Rosas, Sadler’s WellsFriday, 09 November 2012![]() Well, if De Keersmaeker made us work hard for our enlightenment earlier in the week, we more than get our reward with her triumphant, astonishing Cesena in the second part of her double-programme designed for the Avignon Festival.Both pieces are... Read more... |
Dancer Nigel Charnock 1960-2012Thursday, 02 August 2012![]() True originals are those who keep contemporary arts bright, and one of the handful of dance performers who set the 1980s and 90s on fire was a bony, white-skinned, bleakly witty and garrulous physical clown with a taste for the extreme called Nigel... Read more... |
Wiesenland, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsMonday, 09 July 2012![]() Let us conclude, after London’s season of World Cities - 10 dance shows - that Pina Bausch was not a choreographer. She began 50 years ago in Essen as a ballet dancer and like so many dancers in that field got bored with the rules. When she took... Read more... |
Palermo, Palermo, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 03 July 2012![]() The curtain rises onto a wall that totally blocks the view. A long silence... then, without warning, the wall collapses – to cheers of delight from the audience. For the rest of the evening, the dancers have to pick their way over rubble strewn... Read more... |
