Dance
The brutality of ballet
Despite #MeToo and the new resistance to male bullying, the dance world is still ferocious and unforgiving, writes Rupert Christiansen
Lost in space
My witty friend whispered that Wayne McGregor’s new ballet Untitled, 2023 put her in mind of Google HQ – it’s…
Snapshots from the edge
This month I’ve been venturing into the further reaches of modern dance – obscure territory where I don’t feel particularly…
One long moan of woe
I was moved and shaken by Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern when I first saw it in 2017. In richly visualised…
Flesh and fisticuffs
Being of a squeamish sensibility and prejudiced by a low opinion of recent BBC drama, I can claim only a…
National disasters
It is high time the Arts Council put ENO and ENB out of their misery, says Rupert Christiansen
Make mine a triple
Good, better, best was the satisfying trajectory of Northern Ballet’s terrific programme of three original short works, which moves south…
The indispensable impresario
‘What exactly is it you do?’ asked a bamboozled King Alfonso XIII of Spain upon meeting Sergei Diaghilev at a…
Saved from slim pickings
With the major companies largely on their summer breaks, the Edinburgh International Festival struggles to programme a high standard of…
Trock and awe
Louise Levene on the male ballet troupe that realised the ballerinas have all the best lines
Principle of Pan’s People
I’ve always felt uncomfortably ambivalent about the work of Matthew Bourne. Of course, there is no disputing its infectious exuberance…
Tornado Tamara
One wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of Tamara Rojo. The most fearsome figure on the British 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…
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…
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…
Royal appointment
The day I danced with the Duke of Edinburgh
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…
Poetry in motion
How did the universe begin? Did the great god Bumba vomit us up, as the Kuba believe? Or did we…
Great Scott
Ronnie’s: Ronnie Scott and His World-Famous Jazz Club was like the TV equivalent of an authorised biography: impressively thorough, often…
