Dance
Study in Scarlett
Without fanfare or apology, the Royal Ballet appears to have rehabilitated Liam Scarlett, but what a tragic balls-up it has…
To have and to hold
When you take in the richness of a Pina Bausch production — the redolent staging, the eloquent, eccentric twists of…
All that pizazz
Velvet waistcoats, technicolour tulle and some very spangly harem pants — English National Ballet’s atelier must have been mighty busy…
From Russia with love
The enduring appeal of The Nutcracker. The ballet wasn’t always considered quite such a box of delights
From Russia with love
The enduring appeal of The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky’s ravishing score is nothing less than the sound of Christmas
Sleeker than its scrappy parts
The Barcelona-born choreographer Joan Clevillé has form for off-beat storytelling with a streak of sincerity. Before becoming artistic director of…
Sin and salvation
Where does the artist end and their work begin? Like 2015’s Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor’s new ballet swirls creator and…
There will be blood
Like musical supergroups and Olympic basketball teams, ballet galas tend to prize individual gifts over group cohesion. A recent one…
Just the ticket
Last week I attended a dance performance in person for the first time since March last year. If you’d asked…
Great expectations
The OED defines ‘gala’ as ‘a festive occasion’. In the ballet world this usually translates as a handful of stars,…
Lockdown unlocked
The choreographers called on to get the nation’s dancers back on to the stage have as much to say about…
Cheerleaders, cultists and King Kong
Social distancing continues to put the kibosh on large-scale productions, but Jo Stromgren has a nifty workaround in Rooms, which…
Prop forward
In the early Noughties there was a Hollywood subgenre (by which I mean a few cult movies, each with terrible…
Bar-room ballet
Thank God for the fast-forward button. Sadler’s Wells had planned a tentative return to live performance last month but the…
Hello, goodbye
Ballet lovers driven square-eyed by a drip feed of livestreaming and archive footage have been pining for the patter of…
Rhapsody in blue
When Carlos Acosta was named artistic director of Birmingham Royal Ballet in January of this year, he announced ambitious plans…
Two by two
Mothballed since March when it danced a farewell Swan Lake, the Royal Ballet made a triumphant and joyous return to…
Sprinting in the sand
Dancing at Dusk captures the final rehearsal of a new version of Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring. It’s only…
Eroticism and ecstasy
Wayne McGregor’s Morgen! and Frederick Ashton’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits are the first pieces of live dance — streamed…
Uplift
If eight weeks in lockdown have brought out my baser impulses (biscuits by the sleeve, total renunciation of waistbands), it’s…
The Boyz are back in town
Another day in isolation, another bid to find joy in my lone state-sanctioned walk. (Pro tip: stay out longer than…
The stuff of nightmares
It must have been hard for Crystal Pite and Jonathan Young to live up to the success of 2016’s devastating…
This will hurt
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…
