dance

Triptych, Rambert, Sadler's Wells

Hanna Weibye Wednesday, 19 November 2014

How long should a dance programme be? Opera and theatre habitués can be surprised by outings to contemporary dance, where the pieces might be shorter than the intervals, and a 7:30 start could see you comfortably on the 9:15 train home.

Daphnis et Églé/La Naissance d'Osiris, Les Arts Florissants, Christie, Barbican

Jenny Gilbert Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Were it not for William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, the vocal and instrumental ensemble he started in Paris in the 1970s, the beauties of the musical French Baroque might have remained a dusty fact of pre-Revolutionary history. As it is, there is barely a singer, player or conductor now performing Lully, Couperin, Rameau, Charpentier et al who has not benefited from the life’s work of this diligent conductor-musicologist. Through him, their arts are indeed flourishing.

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Dancing Cheek to Cheek, BBC Four

Hanna Weibye Tuesday, 18 November 2014

I am picturing a scene in BBC4’s highly fortified underground headquarters, a conversation between its mastermind-in-chief and a hapless minion. “What do we do well, Stanley?” “History documentaries, boss.” “And what do people, according to the immutable proofs furnished by viewing figures, actually like?” “Ballroom dancing programmes, boss. Costume dramas. And unashamedly populist, good-looking young historians.” “Correct, Stanley.

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Ceremony of Innocence/The Age of Anxiety/Aeternum, Royal Ballet

Hanna Weibye Saturday, 08 November 2014

English National Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet have staged programmes of war pieces already this year; now here's the Royal Ballet bringing up the rear in its own inimitable (and rather oblique) fashion with a triple bill that picks up on and subtly plays with the anxiety felt by those great British artists, Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden, in the 1930s and 1940s.

JOHN, National Theatre

Marianka Swain Wednesday, 05 November 2014

It is no exaggeration to say that Lloyd Newson has created a new theatrical language. Verbatim drama and intricate choreography would seem, on paper, to be fatally competing elements, yet Newson’s hypnotic fusion charges both word and movement with fresh meaning.

TOROBAKA, Israel Galván & Akram Khan, Sadler's Wells

Hanna Weibye Tuesday, 04 November 2014

When you're talking about dancers, the old adage about genius being 99% perspiration has a point. You have to work damned hard just to be average in professional dance; to be good, like Akram Khan and Israel Galván are good, takes sweat (and tears and blood, like as not).

Thomas Adès, See the Music, Hear the Dance, Sadler's Wells

Hanna Weibye Saturday, 01 November 2014

The challenge was already in the title for me: as both a dance critic and a strongly visual person, in the normal order of things I see the dance first and hear the music second.

Cassandra, Ludovic Ondiviela, Royal Ballet, Linbury Studio

Jenny Gilbert Friday, 31 October 2014

Madness is a favourite trope of opera, less so of ballet. There’s Giselle, but her insanity lasts only a few minutes. There’s Kenneth MacMillan’s delusional Anastasia, who believes she's the daughter of the last Tsar of Russia, but the advent of DNA testing destroyed the story’s credibility.

Ashton Mixed Bill, Royal Ballet

Hanna Weibye Sunday, 19 October 2014

This morning, those who follow ballet on both sides of the Atlantic might be feeling a bit like the male soloists at the beginning of Ashton’s Scènes de Ballet: turning their heads sharply, almost pantomimically, from side to side. Over there, in New York, Wendy Whelan, the prima ballerina retiring after a 30-year career with City Ballet, made her farewell in a programme heavy on modern masters Wheeldon and Ratmansky, including a world première.

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Shadows of War, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler's Wells

Hanna Weibye Saturday, 18 October 2014

Another week, another war commemorative; it’s the story of all the arts in 2014. But – because you can always rely on David Bintley and Birmingham Royal Ballet to be different – last night’s programme at Sadler’s was overshadowed by the Second World War, not the First.