wed 13/08/2025

Dance

My Summer Reading: Ballerina Tamara Rojo

In the first of a short summer series in which artists and performers tell theartsdesk about what they're reading, ballerina Tamara Rojo talks about the books she's taken with her on holiday, and what she's enjoyed reading. We run short...

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What did Jane Avril eat? Ask Celebrity Masterchef

What's the preferred scoff of Moulin Rouge can-can dancers? We found out, rather accidentally, last night, if you watched the final of Celebrity Masterchef. And if the world's dancers don't beat down the doors of Paris to get in, I'll eat my chat....

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Le Cirque Invisible, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Some of the stars of 'Le Cirque Invisible': locking down children and adults in two hours of rapture

Charm is as invisible as the circus but as undeniably present in Le Cirque Invisible, an adorable little presentation for which parents should go miles with children to see this month. Charlie Chaplin’s fourth daughter and her husband are not young...

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Cinderella, English National Ballet, London Coliseum

The ball scene designed by David Walker: 'the inky blue court theme allows Cinderella to arrive in her silvery tutu like the full moon in the night'

English National Ballet turns 60 next week, and nowadays just enduring has to be enough. Smelling of greasepaint and tour buses from the very first, it also smelled of stars - Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin who began it, Rudolf Nureyev and Natalia...

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Tanguera, Sadler's Wells Theatre

Strange listening to Sadler’s Wells chief Alistair Spalding timidly defending “cutting-edge” dance on yesterday’s Radio 4 arts debate - having just been to the current SWT dance show, Tanguera. Supposedly giving a smash-hit new international spin on...

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After A Dancemaker Dies, BBC Radio 3

Two giants of dance died last year: Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham. Right now audiences aren’t being deprived of seeing why their names are written permanently in lights in dance history (Bausch’s company performs in Edinburgh and London later...

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Don Quixote, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

There is a moment when you see dancers at their absolute peak that notches a bit of history in your memory - you never forget when you see it happen. In my area of contemporary choreography you can’t measure it in those terms but you can with...

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Le Corsaire & Paquita Triple Bill, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House

After all the encomia for Natalia Osipova it’s time for a paean to another Bolshoi ballerina, whose witty underplaying and conquest of style makes her the lady I’d choose to see shipwrecked in full tutu, diamonds and pink satin pointe shoes on...

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Carlos Acosta, Premieres, London Coliseum

Great stars get lost sometimes. Up there in outer space, ringed with adulation, when they get a mid-life crisis sometimes they get sucked into a vanity black hole. No light emits, just the tatters of an angel who lost his way in his own legend....

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theartsdesk Q&A: Impresarios Victor and Lilian Hochhauser, Part 1

When the words "commercial" and "art" come together - as they do with the Bolshoi season currently at the Royal Opera House - odds are the glue between them is a three-word phrase "Victor Hochhauser presents". Victor and Lilian Hochhauser are the...

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Confirmation: Nacho Duato to lead St Petersburg ballet company

Confirmation today of the astonishing news from Russia - Nacho Duato will indeed become the new director of the Mikhailovsky Ballet, St Petersburg’s second company, from the New Year. The Spanish contemporary choreographer will be the first...

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Photo Gallery: Bolshoi Ballet class by Charlotte MacMillan

Charlotte MacMillan took these exclusive pictures last week of the Bolshoi corps de ballet in class. The pictures brought back memories of his training to English National Ballet's Kirov-trained principal dancer Dmitri Gruzdyev, as he prepares to...

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