dance

The Odyssey, Mark Bruce Company, Circomedia, Bristol

mark Kidel Saturday, 13 February 2016

Mark Bruce did very well with his last dance theatre production Dracula, but this time around he has reached a little too far.

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"...como el musguito...", Pina Bausch, Sadler's Wells

Hanna Weibye Friday, 12 February 2016

Sitting near the front at a Pina Bausch piece always provokes anxiety.

The Return, Circa, Barbican

Hanna Weibye Friday, 29 January 2016

If you thought circus acrobats and Shostakovich were a daring combination, try circus acrobats and Monteverdi. While the spiky harmonies and vivd dynamics of 20th-century Russian string quartets sit pretty nicely with circus show-offery, surely Baroque music, with its steady continuo basses, its measured rise and fall, is a world away from tumbling tricks and strongman stunts?

Rhapsody/The Two Pigeons, Royal Ballet

Hanna Weibye Monday, 18 January 2016

Perhaps the director of the Royal Ballet is a pigeon fancier?

Le Corsaire, English National Ballet, Coliseum

Jenny Gilbert Thursday, 14 January 2016

It’s being sold as the ideal ballet for first-timers, but I would blush to introduce even my neighbour’s cat to this Carry On Up the Harem hokum. Worse, its silliness verges on offensive. When, in Rudolph Nureyev’s 1990s production of La Bayadère for Paris Opera Ballet, a chorus of blacked-up picaninnies appeared for about three minutes, you blinked and put it down to an unwise attempt at historical accuracy.

Until the Lions, Akram Khan, Roundhouse

Hanna Weibye Wednesday, 13 January 2016

As its first gift to dance fans, the new year has delivered not one but two chamber pieces about extraordinary women. Down in Covent Garden this week, Will Tuckett's Elizabeth for Royal Ballet dancers is exploring the life and loves of Queen Elizabeth I, while up in Camden Akram Khan's Until the Lions takes a fresh look at the story of princess Amba, from the Indian classical epic the Mahabharata.

Elizabeth, Royal Ballet

Hanna Weibye Sunday, 10 January 2016

Please, sir, I want some more. Will Tuckett and Alasdair Middleton's Elizabeth is soul food for the hungry dance fan; an ingenious blend of words, music and dance that beguiles and entertains in equal measure.

Comment

Cinderella, Scottish Ballet, Edinburgh Festival Theatre

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 07 January 2016

When producing Cinderella, the main question is: sweet or sour? That Prokofiev score is splendid, but it's no walk in a candy shop; in Act I the stepsisters have passages so scraping, spiky and dissonant that sugar-coating would seem to be out of the question.

Best of 2015: Dance & Ballet

Hanna Weibye Thursday, 31 December 2015

It was business as usual in the British dance world in 2015. Looking back over the year, theartsdesk's dance critics see the industry's many talented, capable people continuing to do their jobs well, but we don't recall being shaken, stirred or surprised as often as in other years, or at least not by new works: our top moments of the year are concentrated in the farewells of great dancers Sylvie Guillem and Carlos Acosta, and in classic productions of classic ballets.

Nutcracker, English National Ballet, London Coliseum

Hanna Weibye Friday, 18 December 2015

Christmas legends are not born; they are made. In the case of the Nutcracker, its Christmas indispensability in Britain and America stems not from the original 1892 St Petersburg production, but from 1950s reinterpretations by emigré Russians (Balanchine and Karinska in the US, Lichine and Benois in the UK). Like most other story ballets, there is no stable text - apart from the Tchaikovsy score, of course, but Balanchine was happy to cut and rearrange that too.