Why are today’s choreographers so musically illiterate?
Most choreographers today have lost interest in using music as anything more than a background wash of colour and mood.…
The best thing Cathy Marston has ever done
The Royal Ballet has scheduled what – on paper at least – looks like one of the most dismally dull…
‘Ballet is antiquated, and it works’: Royal Ballet principal Matthew Ball interviewed
The history of the male ballet dancer is a chequered one. In the early 19th century, he was the star…
What a joy La Fille mal gardée is
The winter nights may be drawing in and everyone is down with stinking colds as the civilised world inexorably disintegrates,…
Let’s face it, Sleeping Beauty is a bit of a bore
Let’s face it, The Sleeping Beauty runs the high risk of being a bit of a bore. A wonderfully inventive…
I could watch Balanchine’s Theme and Variations on repeat
R:Evolution is a pun, presumably intended to suggest that tradition is not static and the obvious truth that change always…
Michael Keegan-Dolan’s How to be a Dancer is worthy of Flann O’Brien
Michael Keegan-Dolan’s show doesn’t even pretend to live up to the arresting proposition in its title – anyone hoping to…
Both thin and overblown: Royal Ballet’s A Single Man reviewed
A common flaw in narrative ballet today is the attempt to tell stories that are too complex and ramified for…
Picasso’s ravishing work for the ballet
Visitors to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new storehouse in Stratford’s Olympic Park are being enthralled by an atmospherically lit…
The decline of Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival was established to champion the civilising power of European high culture in a spirit of postwar healing.…
One of the best productions of Giselle I have ever seen
Giselle is my favourite among the 19th-century classics. Blessed with a charming score by the melodically fertile Adolphe Adam and…
A latter-day exercise in Dada: Nature Theater of Oklahoma reviewed
What to make of the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, which this week made its British debut at the Queen Elizabeth…
Depressingly corny: Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet, reviewed
It’s all very well for people like me to sneer at dance makers for drawing on classic rock as a…
The artistic benefits of not being publicly subsidised
Paralysed rather than empowered by the heavy hand of Big Brother Arts Council, the major subsidised dance companies are running…
The cheering fantasies of Oliver Messel
Through the grey downbeat years of postwar austerity, we nursed cheering fantasies of a life more lavishly colourful and hedonistic.…
Christopher Wheeldon’s real gifts lie in abstract dance
Christopher Wheeldon must be one of the most steadily productive and widely popular figures in today’s dance world, but I’m…
Budget Ballets Russes: BRB2’s Diaghilev and the Birth of Modern Ballet reviewed
Although I doff my hat to Carlos Acosta’s BRB2, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s junior troupe, for a reminder of what is…
Exhilarating – but also exhausting: ENB’s The Forsythe Programme reviewed
The first time I saw the work of Trajal Harrell I stomped out in a huff muttering about the waste…
Rejoice at the Royal Ballet’s superb feast of Balanchine
Any evening devoted to the multifaceted genius of George Balanchine is something to be grateful for, manna in the wilderness…
What a joy to see some Merce Cunningham again
How salutary to encounter the cool cerebral elegance of Merce Cunningham’s choreography again. A figure at the heart of the…
Irresistible: Osipova/Linbury reviewed
One of the few indisputably great ballerinas of her generation, Natalia Osipova is a magnificent exemplar of the Russian school,…
I’ve had it with Pina Bausch
My patience with the cult of Pina Bausch is wearing paper thin. She was taken from us 16 years ago,…
Does Sadler’s Wells really need a lavish new building?
Arts Council England may be successfully clobbering the poor old genre of opera into the ground, but its sister art…
What a sad thing Strictly Come Dancing has become
Those of a violently masochistic disposition would have heartily enjoyed the Saturday matinée of the Strictly Come Dancing: Live Tour…
A jewel in the English National Ballet’s crown: Giselle reviewed
Since its première in Paris in 1841, Giselle has weathered a bumpy ride. For St Petersburg in 1884, Petipa gave…
