Dance
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…
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.…
A last dose of vitamin D before the clocks go back: Royal Ballet’s triple bill reviewed
Were those gerberas in Francesca Hayward’s bouquet on opening night? Gentlemen admirers take note: no woman, ballerina or otherwise, has…
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…
Nothing sings and shimmies like Alvin Ailey
Hit them with your best shot? Or save the best till last? Almost 30 years after Alvin Ailey’s death in…
Daffy charm and diabolo tricks: Bolshoi’s The Bright Stream reviewed
The Bright Stream is a ballet about a collective farm. Forget everything you know about collectivism — the failed harvests,…
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…
Electrifying: English National Ballet’s She Persisted reviewed
‘Where was the Kahlo brow?’ asked my guest in the first interval of English National Ballet’s She Persisted, a triple…
