dance
The Prince of the Pagodas, Birmingham Royal Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 27 March 2014
When three good choreographers can’t get a ballet right, there must be something wrong with either the story or the music. In the case of the Prince of the Pagodas (a Poirot mystery waiting to be written, that, but I digress), it’s hardly the music: Benjamin Britten’s gamelan-leavened, melodic score, his only for a ballet, is compelling. Read more...
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Border Tales, Protein Dance Company, The PlaceFriday, 14 March 2014
Luca Silvestrini paints his contentious look at multiculturalism in Britain in the brash primary colours of stereotyping, allowing little space on the canvas for the light and shade of personal insight. Read more... |
Trasmín/Gala Flamenca, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 12 March 2014
In Trasmín, the curtain rises on two bodies leaning apart, yet reaching back to face one other, each columnar figure a twisted into a perfect spiral line from knees to the tips of curved fingers. Their feet are concealed by the great fabric swathes (for which “frills” is much too flimsy a label) of their traditional bata de cola dresses: rising from those grey cascades they look like two rococo sculptures in a fountain. Read more... |
BBC Ballet SeasonMonday, 10 March 2014
There’s been reasonable diversity in the ballet shown on the BBC in recent years – from full-length broadcasts of Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty and The Red Shoes to the compelling 2011 fly-on-the-wall The Agony and the Ecstasy. That’s why it was something of a disappointment to find this week’s five-hour ballet season, which finished last night, pushing a rather blandly uniform story about Tchaikovsky, Darcey Bussell and Margot Fonteyn. Read more... |
La Pepa, Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras, Sadler's WellsSunday, 02 March 2014
“Goya!” I scribbled enthusiastically in the first moments of La Pepa. “Dos de Mayo! Read more... |
The Sleeping Beauty, Royal BalletSunday, 23 February 2014
Clement Crisp, veteran ballet critic, once expressed his appreciation for Ashton’s Scènes de Ballet by saying that “if one had to throw ballets off the back of a sleigh, this would be the last to go.” Charming though the train of thought was that this metaphorical situation provoked (an insomniac ballet critic could muse on it for several nights), it can’t accommodate The Sleeping Beauty, which is to other ballets like the QE2 to Crisp’s sleigh. Read more... |
Nine Songs, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Sadler’s WellsSaturday, 22 February 2014
In 2008, a disastrous fire gutted Cloud Gate’s rehearsal studio in Taipei destroying props, costumes and the company archive. Amazingly though, the masks worn by the deities in Nine Songs survived the blaze and Lin Hwai-min, founder of the award-winning company, was so moved by the miracle that he decided to re-stage this sumptuous work. Read more... |
Opus, Circa and Debussy String Quartet, BarbicanFriday, 21 February 2014
Well! Just when you think you’ve constructed a nice tripartite schema for dance styles based on their relationship with the ground, along comes a company which tears up that rule book entirely. Read more... |
1980, Tanztheater Wuppertal, Sadler's WellsSunday, 09 February 2014
Review convention is to put this at the end, but I can’t risk you stopping reading before I can say: go and see 1980 while it is at Sadler's Wells this week. It is one of the most extraordinary works you will ever watch. Read more... |
Rhapsody/Tetractys/Gloria, The Royal BalletFriday, 07 February 2014
Is it odd that, in a bill containing an achingly contemporary première and a classic meditation on the First World War, a pastel-painted present for the Queen Mother’s birthday should race away with the honours? Read more... |
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