Dance
Triple Bill, Royal Ballet review - Arthur Pita's 'Wind' is a howling successTuesday, 07 November 2017
Of all the stories Arthur Pita could have chosen to wrangle for his new narrative ballet, he chose one about wind, perhaps the trickiest element of all to represent on a live stage. Tricky because of course you can’t see wind, you can only see its... Read more... |
Kenneth MacMillan: A National Celebration, Programmes 2 & 3, Royal Opera House review - abhorrent to sublimeFriday, 27 October 2017
The choreographer Kenneth MacMillan was a man of many modes and moods, and it’s tempting to wonder how many more he might have revealed had he not been felled by a heart attack at the age of 62. Two retrospective programmes staged this week –... Read more... |
Michael Clark Company, Barbican Theatre review - bad boy of dance comes goodSaturday, 21 October 2017
If there were an arts award for loyalty, the Barbican Theatre would surely win it for having kept faith with Michael Clark. It’s no secret that the bad-boy image that has clung to Clark since his punk extravaganzas in the 1980s had consequences in... Read more... |
Kenneth MacMillan, Royal Opera House review - a sprite proves mercilessFriday, 20 October 2017
There are different ways of celebrating a great artist’s legacy, and I suppose they have to coexist. One approach is raptly to admire his or her acknowledged masterpieces, the equivalent of making straight for Guernica or the Mona Lisa. The other... Read more... |
Fierce: the Birmingham festival which reaches out to Europe and beyondWednesday, 18 October 2017
Since its inception in 1997 Fierce, Birmingham’s International Festival of Live Art & Performance, has championed the work of performance makers not often seen in Britain. The pantheon of body artists under Mark Ball’s era as director included... Read more... |
A Celebration of Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Northern Ballet review - a brave and worthy tributeSaturday, 14 October 2017
Northern Ballet do a challenging job really well: on a mid-scale touring company budget and doing all the things mid-scale touring companies have to do (tour, obviously, but also outreach and audience-building and Christmas ballets for children),... Read more... |
h.Club 100 Awards 2017: The WinnersWednesday, 04 October 2017
At a festive ceremony on Tuesday night at The Hospital Club in central London, the winners were announced for this year's h.Club 100 Awards. The distinguished broacaster John Simpson (pictured below) gave an impassioned keynote address about the... Read more... |
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Royal Ballet review - a feast of visual delightsThursday, 28 September 2017
I can imagine Monica Mason, the artistic director who commissioned Christopher Wheeldon's 2011 Alice, feeling pretty pleased with herself as she looked around the Covent Garden auditorium last night at an audience buzzing with excitement for the... Read more... |
Akram Khan's Giselle, Sadler's Wells review - the migrant crisis in a ballet thrillerThursday, 21 September 2017
Of the many good reasons for seeing Akram Khan’s 2016 remake of Giselle – his work is often a headline event, for one – the most compelling is the company performing it. English National Ballet used to be the poor relation of its plusher sister... Read more... |
La Bayadère, Mariinsky Ballet review - a parade of delightsSaturday, 12 August 2017
There are half as many performances of La Bayadère in this Mariinsky tour as performances of Swan Lake (four vs eight). The preponderance of Swan Lake is driven by audience demand, but if audiences knew what was good for them, they'd demand more... Read more... |
Contrasts, Mariinsky Ballet review - company shows off range of its powersThursday, 10 August 2017
There are two approaches to a triple bill: make all three pieces similar so you get one crowd with definite tastes, or make them very different so you have a chance of pleasing everyone. The Contrasts bill that the Mariinsky ballet showed at the... Read more... |
Swan Lake, Mariinsky Ballet review - Xander Parish lacks the spark of wildfireFriday, 28 July 2017
It's a Cinderella story: Xander Parish was plucked from obscurity in the Royal Ballet corps and trained by the Mariinsky to dance the greatest roles in the repertoire. Now, not only is he the first Briton to join the historic Russian company, he has... Read more... |
