new choreography
Dark With Excessive Bright, Royal Ballet review - a close encounter with dancers stripped bareWednesday, 14 February 2024
The word “immersive” is overused. When an immersive experience can be anything from a foreign language course to a trip down the Amazon on a headset, what might immersive dance involve? Not watching from a plush-covered seat, probably, and the dance... Read more... |
Anemoi / The Cellist, Royal Ballet review - a feast of music in a neat double billWednesday, 25 October 2023
Double bills at the ballet don’t often come as neatly gift-wrapped. Each of the works in question was made just before or during lockdown, arriving at its premiere by the skin of its teeth. Each went on to win a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award... Read more... |
English National Ballet: Ek, Forsythe, Quagebeur review - two masters, two marvelsSaturday, 12 November 2022
Of all the classic musical scores that could appeal to a choreographer, three are catnip: Ravel’s Bolero, Bizet’s Carmen, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Each has been set dozens of times and the veteran Swedish dancemaker Mats Ek has notched up... Read more... |
Light of Passage, Royal Ballet review - a new full-evening work by Crystal Pite is eloquent and movingFriday, 21 October 2022
Marshalling a mass of bodies around a stage is what all choreographers do. But nobody does it quite like Crystal Pite, the Canadian whose half-hour piece "Flight Pattern" – a comment on the global refugee crisis – was a hit for the Royal Ballet... Read more... |
Starstruck, Scottish Ballet review - smart, sassy and cinematicFriday, 03 December 2021
How do you picture Gene Kelly? Most likely in his effervescent screen persona, either as the burly ex-GI of An American in Paris, or as the hoofer without a raincoat in Singin’ in the Rain.You’re less likely to picture him peering through a movie... Read more... |
Ballet Black, Linbury Theatre review - an essential part of the landscapeFriday, 12 November 2021
The colour of a shoe might seem a trivial thing. But when in 2018 the dancewear manufacturer Freed launched the UK’s first range of pointe shoes to match darker skin tones, true equal opportunity in British ballet came a big step closer.... Read more... |
Curated by Carlos, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler's Wells review - a star turnSaturday, 06 November 2021
When a great performer takes on the running of a ballet company, the effect on its dancers can be transformative. It happened when Mikhail Baryshnikov took on American Ballet Theatre in the 1980s. It’s been happening at English National Ballet since... Read more... |
Carousel, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - brave rewrite doesn't landTuesday, 10 August 2021
You've got to hand it to the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park: this venue never simply dusts off a familiar musical title and plonks it onstage. Their commitment to reinvestigating the material, whatever it is, has done wonders for the... Read more... |
Reunion: An Evening with English National Ballet review - back on stage and fabulousTuesday, 18 May 2021
You could hardly call this back to normal at London’s premier dance house. For a start, there was too much red plush visible in the stalls, not all of it the result of COVID-safe spacing. There were prefatory onstage speeches and a filmed thank you... Read more... |
Institute, BBC Four review – masculinity and memory in a nightmarish world of workMonday, 20 July 2020
Missing the office? Or dreading the day you have to return? What’s your relationship to the people you work with and for, and how does it intersect with your personal life? Do your paymasters know you? Do they care about you? Are there days when the... Read more... |
Cats, The Shows Must Go On review - a purr-fectly theatrical experienceSaturday, 16 May 2020
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... Read more... |
Dada Masilo's Giselle, Sadler's Wells review - bold, brutal, unforgivingTuesday, 08 October 2019
The most arresting thing about Dada Masilo’s contemporary South African take on Giselle is Masilo herself. Tiny and boyishly slight, she inhabits her own fast, fidgety, tribal-inspired choreography with the intensity of someone in a trance. Costumed... Read more... |
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