Dance
South Bank Show: The Male Dancer, Sky Arts 1Monday, 18 June 2012
Male dancers are a puzzle to British audiences, where they are an uncomplicated, taken-for-granted treasure in Latin or Slav countries. I point this out gratuitously, as it's a point that wasn't touched upon by Melvyn Bragg's film about three iconic... Read more... |
Arise, Sir Kenneth Branagh and Dame Zaha HadidSaturday, 16 June 2012
Zaha Hadid, visionary architect of the London Olympics Aquatic Centre, becomes a Dame and three new knights of the arts are created in the Queen's Jubilee Birthday Honours announced this morning. Actor Kenneth Branagh, long touted as Sir Laurence... Read more... |
...Como El Musguito..., Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 13 June 2012
If you are tired of life, tired of London, or even tired of love, muster the remaining fibres of your frazzled being and do whatever it takes to get tickets for ...como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si... or any of the other performances in... Read more... |
Nur Du, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Barbican TheatreMonday, 11 June 2012
Many people will be having their first taste of the late Pina Bausch’s dance-theatre in this copious London retrospective of 10 of her “World City” productions; others will have bought into several of the series, possibly by now wondering how many... Read more... |
Viktor, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsThursday, 07 June 2012
It stymies any tourist to sum up for others what they saw abroad. Still more challenging, to create (or recreate) for theatre as a choreographer something more than superficial, more than clichéd about Italy, Japan, Los Angeles, Istanbul, these most... Read more... |
The Prince of the Pagodas, The Royal BalletSunday, 03 June 2012
As Mrs Thatcher used to say, don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions. Solutions have been flung with a will at the problem ballet of Kenneth MacMillan’s last years, his orientalist fairytale The Prince of the Pagodas - the Royal Ballet’s... Read more... |
Matthew Bourne's Early Adventures, Richmond TheatreSaturday, 02 June 2012
Matthew Bourne’s charm is a rare and cheering thing in the world of dance - a night out with three of his earliest works, Spitfire, Town & Country and The Infernal Galop, is akin to sitting down to watch Father Ted or Dad’s Army. It’s clever,... Read more... |
Hopeful Olympic gymnast's routine created by ballet dancerThursday, 31 May 2012Five-times British champion gymnast Frankie Jones has picked a routine for her Olympics attempt created by Birmingham Royal Ballet principal dancer Matthew Lawrence.Welsh-born 21-year-old Jones is the only British individual rhythmic gymnast to... Read more... |
Interview: Carlos Saura, Flamenco filmmakerMonday, 28 May 2012
Carlos Saura is 80, though he looks 60. With a lived-in face and straggly grey hair, he resembles a rebel professor on a 1970s campus. He’s garrulous and speaks a rolling, recklessly elided Spanish. He’s had seven children by four women, one of them... Read more... |
Ballo della Regina/ La Sylphide, Royal BalletTuesday, 22 May 2012
Ballo della Regina is a strange piece, for many reasons. A piece of minor Balanchine, it was created late in life for a dancer he clearly admired but who was not core to his vision. Strangest of all, he used music by Verdi, a composer whose music he... Read more... |
Rambert: Sub/ The Art of Touch/ Nijinsky's Faune/ What Wild Ecstasy, Sadler's WellsThursday, 17 May 2012
The past is a hard card to play for a contemporary dance company, even harder than for a ballet company. A work that’s proved over time, whose quality emerges and re-emerges with revisiting, casts an imposing shadow over new works created in the... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Matthew Bourne and the making of Swan Lake 3DTuesday, 15 May 2012
A boy alone in his vast white bedroom has a recurrent haunting dream, frightening yet somehow comforting - a swan invades his mind, simultaneously menacing him with its power and wildness, and yet wrapping its great wings around him to shield him,... Read more... |
