Dance
Carlos at 50, Royal Opera House review - lovingly designed gala from a still impressive starThursday, 27 July 2023
On the day Mick Jagger turned 80, that spring chicken Carlos Acosta, 50 this year, returned to the stage of the Royal Opera House, which he had left in 2015 after 17 years. Carlos at 50 was a wonderfully sunny, warm embrace of a return: the audience... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Ravenna Festival - invisible cities and possible dreamsMonday, 17 July 2023
Came for the music, returned for the theatre. I oversimplify: Riccardo Muti’s Roads of Friendship events, meetings of his Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra with players from other places – since 1997, they have included Sarajevo, Lebanon, Kenya, Iran... Read more... |
Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras, Sadler's Wells - a roaring start to the Flamenco FestivalSaturday, 08 July 2023
When flamenco first came out of the shadows and started to fill big theatres, it was like something out of a historical pageant. The shows that played London in the early 1990s harked back to an imagined gypsy past where old men hammered rhythms on... Read more... |
Untitled, 2023 / Corybantic Games / Anastasia Act III, Royal Ballet review - a magnificent end to the seasonSaturday, 17 June 2023
Is it a cop-out for an artist to label a piece of work “Untitled”? Painters and sculptors make a habit of it, reasoning that they want to leave the viewer free to bring to the experience what they will, unhampered and unlimited by prior information... Read more... |
Requiem, Opera North review - partnership and diversityWednesday, 31 May 2023
Innovation is always a risky business. Opera North’s vision and ambition for this production is to create, in effect, a new genre: a combination of staged choral-orchestral performance with contemporary dance.Partnership and diversity are the buzz... Read more... |
Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT1), Sadler's Wells review - an extinction rebellion in danceMonday, 24 April 2023
The timing was impeccable, though almost certainly accidental. As protesters lay prostrate in The Mall in a mass “die-in” on the day designated as Earth Day, and as many thousands more urged action against climate change outside the Houses of... Read more... |
Hunting legendary treasure with ballet's Indiana Jones - Pierre Lacotte 1932-2023Wednesday, 19 April 2023
As any archaeologist knows, digging up a sarcophagus is a nailbiting business. How small are the chances that inside the shredded linen wrappings will lie a recognisable body with some vestiges of its former life upon it?Enough DNA and bone to... Read more... |
Jungle Book reimagined, Sadler's Wells review - a doomy revision of the Kipling storiesFriday, 07 April 2023
Akram Khan Company promises “a magical dance-theatre retelling of Kipling’s classic”, and that’s more or less what you get. The choreography is striking and inventive, the dancing and staging superb.What work less well is the overall tone, which,... Read more... |
Cinderella, Royal Ballet review - the first British ballet learns the language of flowersSaturday, 01 April 2023
The urge to redesign a heritage ballet is a curious one, given not just the expense but the fact that the main draw of an old ballet is the steps and the music, which stay the same whatever the stage dressing. The Royal Ballet was keen, however, to... Read more... |
Tom Dale Company, The Place review - immersive and genre-bustingWednesday, 29 March 2023
With all the talk – and, frankly, fear – around AI and the increasing dominance of the digital world, it’s fascinating to see what dance has to say about it.Although choreographers have been playing with avatars and movement sensors for a couple of... Read more... |
'You want to cry from loving to do it so much' - Lynn Seymour 1939-2023Wednesday, 15 March 2023
As a critic, I’ve rarely felt compelled to mourn publicly about an artist. Mourning goes somewhere beyond the usual sense of loss and gratitude when someone's death has been announced. But it's the only word when the departed is one of the very few... Read more... |
Turn It Out with Tiler Peck, Sadler's Wells review - America's ballet wonder-woman raises the barreTuesday, 14 March 2023
She can do anything. That’s what choreographers say about Tiler Peck, the peppy New York City Ballet principal who has launched a stream of projects above and beyond the day job. You want speed? Wham, you get it. You want complexity? She can learn a... Read more... |
