Merce Cunningham’s work was magical, intangible, Einsteinian – revival is futile
On Tuesday, thousands of miles apart, in three great cities, London, New York and Los Angeles, 75 dancers will dance…
Seeing the light
Dance is an ephemeral art. It keeps few proper records of its products. Reputations are written in rumours and reviews.…
Emotional intelligence
The difference between a poor ballet of the book (see the Royal Ballet’s Frankenstein) and a good one — indeed…
Losing the plot
If a football manager produces a string of losses, the writing is on the wall and out he goes. He’s…
Fade to grey
Every ballet company wants a box-office earner. But why Scottish Ballet’s leader Christopher Hampson kept on at David Dawson until…
The female gaze
Tamara Rojo programmed three female choreographers for her English National Ballet spring bill because, she said, she had never danced…
An American in Paris
Paris Opera Ballet plays hard to get. It doesn’t deign to travel all the way over here, thanks to a…
Black magic
Ballet’s romantic mantra could be summed up by John Keats’s ballad ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, in which a young…
Second thoughts
You revisit an old love with wariness. Time’s passed for both of you — sharp edges have been smoothed, and…
Sex on legs
That joke about the young bull who tells the old bull, ‘Hey, Dad, see all those cows — let’s run…
Notes on a scandal
How could it possibly go wrong? The magnetic, seething Russian star Natalia Osipova playing the tragic woman in John Singer…
Unforgettable fire
How much of a compromise does a fashionable choreographer loved by all have to make with his paymasters? When he’s…
Turkish delight
I’ve seen some people saying that English National Ballet’s Le Corsaire is so out-of-date it’s risible to see it staged…
Off the page
Dance has its own archaeological periods, and 2016’s schedules are confirming what 2015 indicated — that the era of dances…
Why did a Russian ballet dancer throw acid in his boss’s face?
The 16th June 1961 and 17th January 2013 are two indelible dates in the annals of Russian ballet. Two events…
Bird brained
For all the billing and cooing on public forums about the Royal Ballet’s The Two Pigeons revival, there’s a silent…
Ménage à trois
Mark Baldwin, artistic director of Rambert Dance, must take responsibility for most of the good times I’ve had recently, midwife…
West End wannabe
The love that asks no questions, the love that pays the price… The amount of unconditional love sloshing about at…
Wherefore art thou Romeo?
You always remember your first time, don’t you? And in ballet one imagines that Juliet wants to remember her first…
Giselle has floored many a ballerina — it did so again last week
English has all sorts of emotive metaphors for how we feel about the ground. We’re floored. Or well grounded. Or…
Gutted!
There was blood on the walls and floor at the birth of Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet in 1965. The…
Fighting talk
If there’s one thing scarcer than hen’s teeth in serious choreography nowadays, it’s a light heart. When was the last…
Martian moves
Every August when London dims, Edinburgh calls, promising nothing less than ‘the greats of the arts’ at the International Festival.…
Afterthoughts
The blackness that sweeps along the stage behind Sylvie Guillem’s disappearing figure in the Russell Maliphant piece on her farewell…
Pulp fiction
Hot, languorous, sizzling… I was thinking what an ideal show Matthew Bourne’s noir comedy is to watch on a summer’s…
