The Trocks’ shtick is getting tired
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo were popular regulars at Washington’s Kennedy Center until Trump’s demented blast against decadent queerness.…
How good is Wayne McGregor?
‘Professor Sir Wayne McGregor CBE’ runs the headline to a biographical essay in the programme for the Royal Ballet’s triple…
Excruciating tedium from Pina Bausch
You’re never too old to dance we are told nowadays. This encouraging injunction has been taken up by everyone from…
A mesmerising new work from English National Ballet
Crystal Pite is one of a handful of truly original choreographers today, extending the boundaries of her art form without…
Today’s ballerinas are too perfect
‘Ballet is woman,’ Balanchine once gnomically pronounced. A remark not to be taken too literally, but essentially true. Like every…
A highlight in an otherwise dull season: Pierrot Lunaire reviewed
Even if Schoenberg’s song cycle Pierrot Lunaire is never going to feature on anyone’s Desert Island Discs, it stands as…
The joy of Paul Taylor
When the American choreographer Paul Taylor died at the age of 88 in 2018, he should have been consecrated a…
What has happened to the Paris Opéra Ballet?
Freighted by a 350-year history, the Paris Opéra Ballet is a behemoth of an institution – lavishly subsidised by the…
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…
