Sadler's Wells
Sylvie Guillem, 6000 Miles Away, Sadler's Wells TheatreThursday, 07 July 2011
Sylvie Guillem is back, chicken-skinny, middle-aged, dressed like a dowd. Did I just write that? And let’s add: as swift as mercury, as exact as a feather, as light as the sun, and as eternal in intelligent beauty as Nefertiti. In contemporary dance... Read more... |
Contemporary Dance Weekend, BBC FourSaturday, 02 July 2011
Yesterday was a day when male physicality and the science of movement preoccupied - when you watch Rafa Nadal or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, you can’t help thinking about the contrasts of grace that achieve the same athletic needs; Nadal the pouncing... Read more... |
Joanna MacGregor, Wigmore Hall/ Sol Picó, Sadler's Wells TheatreSunday, 26 June 2011
The two-course evening out is made possible by the Wigmore Hall’s late Friday-night concerts, so if you get out of a central-London show - or dinner - by, say, 9.30, you can add a second layer of entertainment at 10. In my case, a ferociously poor... Read more... |
Dave St-Pierre Company, Un Peu de Tendresse, Sadler's WellsFriday, 03 June 2011
When asked if I wanted to go and see two dozen naked Canadians doing audience participation, the answer was, self-evidently, nonononononononono. And then, for good measure, NO. Well, I’m here to tell you, I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And I... Read more... |
Rambert, Cardoon Club/ Roses/ Monolith, Sadler’s WellsTuesday, 24 May 2011
Paul Taylor's Roses is called Roses because, well, because it is. There are no roses here, no flowery sentiment, no overwrought angst and emotion. This, one of Taylor’s most beautifully serene works, is the smell of roses on a still May evening:... Read more... |
Cleopatra, Northern Ballet, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 17 May 2011
David Nixon has been artistic director of Northern Ballet for a decade, and it’s probably safe to say he is the king of the story ballet: Wuthering Heights, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Madame Butterfly, Dracula – if it’s got a story, he is, seemingly... Read more... |
Dutch National Ballet, Hans Van Manen, Sadler's WellsThursday, 12 May 2011
In a world crying out for even below-mediocre ballet choreographers (Benjamin Millepied, anyone?), the Dutch old master Hans Van Manen is an extraordinarily well-kept secret. Why a man of such superb balletic accomplishment, theatrical instincts... Read more... |
Pénombre, Rosalba Torres Guerrero & Lucas Racasse, Sadler's WellsThursday, 05 May 2011
Pénombre, penumbra: "The partially shaded region around the shadow of an opaque body, when the light source is larger than a point source and only part of its light is cut off (contrasted with the full shadow or umbra)." Pénombre, penumbra: "An area... Read more... |
Final curtain for Sadler's WellsThursday, 28 April 2011
Sad news for arts lovers with an eye on the horses - Sadler’s Wells, dubbed the greatest-ever sire of racehorses, died this week aged 30. His parents were the champion sire Northern Dancer and Fairy Bridge, and the arts supplied the names for racing... Read more... |
Rosas, Bartók/ Mikrokosmos, Sadler's WellsSaturday, 16 April 2011
Sometimes, watching contemporary dance, you feel that no choreographer has ever known a happy moment – such angst, such grief, such terrible agony rolls over the footlights out to the audience that arriving at the theatre feeling mildly content can... Read more... |
Rosas, Fase, Sadler’s WellsSunday, 10 April 2011
How do simple things get complicated? How do they stay simple once they are complicated? These might, perhaps, be the questions from which choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, starts. But in fact, she starts, as all great choreographers do,... Read more... |
Daniel Linehan, Sadler's Wells, Lilian Baylis TheatreWednesday, 06 April 2011
Photography is linked closely with memory. Photographs help us recall family, friends, holidays, and it can attest to an event. But one could argue that it actually serves a purpose of forgetting. As we are immersed in a digital age, the photograph... Read more... |
