Leave Bizet’s Carmen alone
I’ve always felt uncomfortably ambivalent about the work of Matthew Bourne. Of course, there is no disputing its infectious exuberance…
I suspect this was a rush job: Like Water for Chocolate reviewed
How much weight of plot can dance carry? Balanchine famously insisted that there are no mothers-in-law in ballet, and masters…
Touching, eclectic and exhilarating: Rambert Dance is in great shape
Rambert ages elegantly: it might just rank as the world’s oldest company devoted to modern dance (whatever that term might…
Impressive interpretations marred by cuts: Scottish Ballet's The Scandal at Mayerling reviewed
Sneer all you like at its prolixities and vulgarities but Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling remains a ballet that packs an exceptionally…
A fitting swansong from Tamara Rojo: The Forsythe Evening reviewed
One wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of Tamara Rojo. The most fearsome figure on the British dance…
Why is dance so butch these days?
For an art form that once boldly set out to question conventional divisions of gender, ballet now seems to be…
Liam Scarlett's enduring legacy: Royal Ballet's Swan Lake reviewed
Without fanfare or apology, the Royal Ballet appears to have rehabilitated Liam Scarlett, but what a tragic balls-up it has…
The first patrons of Modernism deserve much sympathy and respect
If Modernism is a jungle, how do you navigate a path through its thickets? Some explorers — Peter Gay and…
Where would ballet be without Marius Petipa?
Should the man on the Clapham omnibus ever turn his mind to ballet, he is bound to envisage the work…
When opera singers can’t sing
Were Florence Foster Jenkins and her fellow culprits touchingly heroic, cynically fraudulent or just plain bonkers? Rupert Christiansen reports
