Dance
A bruising encounter: Pina Bausch's Bluebeard reviewed
Pina Bausch’s best work always hovered between the familiar and the unknown. The late choreographer revelled in borders and thresholds,…
Chilling: Arthur Pita’s The Little Match Girl at Sadler’s Wells reviewed
Did your feet twitch? That’s the test of The Red Shoes. Did your toes point? Your ankles flex? Your arches…
How to make a Christmas ballet hit: behind the scenes at Scottish Ballet’s Snow Queen
Ballet, like bread sauce and green chartreuse, is often just a Christmas thing and the UK’s national companies plan their…
Unsettlingly faithful to the spirit of Schiele: Staging Schiele reviewed
‘Come up and see my Schieles.’ Those were the words that ended a friend’s fledgling relationship with an art collector.…
Manon can be magnificent, this one was merely meh
Manon: minx or martyr? There are two ways to play Kenneth MacMillan’s courtesan. Is Manon an ingénue, a guileless country…
Silly but stellar: Bolshoi Ballet’s Spartacus reviewed
It’s togas-a-go-go as the Bolshoi bring Yuri Grigorovich’s 1956 ballet Spartacus to the Royal Opera House. Oh dear, I did…
Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets is a revelation
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is full of music and movement. The players, such as they are, slip, slide, shake, tumble,…
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s #MeToo Medusa is a bad hair day from Hades
Medusa is the bad hair day from Hades. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s retelling of the Greek myth is frizzy, tangled and…
Still far from perfect but chaps will like it: Royal Ballet’s Frankenstein reviewed
Choreographer Richard Alston is now 70 and his latest outing at Sadler’s Wells is a greatest hits medley. As with…
Almost triumphs over the absurdity of its premise: Northern Ballet’s Victoria reviewed
Blame Kenneth MacMillan. The great Royal Ballet choreographer of the 1960s, 70s and 80s was convinced that narrative dance could…
Forget the Don – come for the Mataphwoar Ryoichi Hirano: Royal Ballet’s Don Quixote reviewed
The trouble with Don Quixote is Don Quixote. Whenever the doddering, delusional Don is onstage, tilting at windmills, riding his…
One nasty moment aside, the ENB’s Manon is superlative
If you like the BBC’s Les Misérables, you’ll love English National Ballet’s Manon. Manon, in Kenneth MacMillan’s telling, is The…
January as you would wish it: Royal Ballet’s Les Patineurs reviewed
The Royal Ballet’s Les Patineurs is January as you would wish it. No slush, no new-year sales, no streaming chest…
You’ll have shivers down your spine and tears in your eyes: Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker reviewed
Not another Nutcracker, I thought on the way to the Opera House. Haven’t we had our fill of Sugar Plums?…
Has the Royal Ballet found its hero?
The Royal Ballet is a company in search of a prince. It has no lack of dancing princesses. You could…
How could anyone object to the Royal Ballet engaging in cultural appropriation?
La Bayadère opens with a sacred flame and ends with an earthquake. In between, Marius Petipa’s ballet of 1877 gives…
Why does the English National Ballet bother taking Manon to the provinces?
Like it or not, provincial ballet audiences love a story they can hum and any director planning to tour a…
Why Mayerling is a #MeToo minefield
Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling is a #MeToo minefield. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary is a serial seducer, a man of many…
Bravura piss-taking from Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
‘Ballet is woman’ insisted George Balanchine, but ballet can also be a big man in a dress as any fan…
A smidge of self-indulgence amid the power and grace: Akram Khan’s Xenos reviewed
‘Comedy Sunil Lanba, Salman Quaraishi, Omar Syed…’ Names play from a crackling gramophone. We hear what they were before the…
Proper tutus, gorgeous designs, first-rate dancing: Royal Ballet’s new Swan Lake reviewed
The Royal Ballet’s 2016 Frankenstein was a masterclass in how not to make narrative dance and the news that Liam…
How do these Shaolin monks square six shows a week with monking?
The Shaolin monks are no strangers to the stage. Their home in Dengfeng is a major stop on the Chinese…
The men give the women little to work with: Giselle reviewed
A bumper fortnight for Covent Garden florists thanks to a 20th-anniversary flower shower for the Royal Ballet’s Marianela Nunez and…
ENB’s La Sylphide resembles a lock-in at a Royal Mile souvenir shop
Gurn loves Effy, Effy is engaged to James but James is away with the fairies: a recipe for love tragedy.…
The nymphs are hit and miss, but Osipova is a witty, multifaceted Sylvia: the Royal Ballet’s Sylvia reviewed
You can pay homage to a ballet classic or you can tear it up and reinvent it. Both approaches were…
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