Dance

Dancing feat: Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby rehearsing choreography for Blue Skies

From buck dancing to Happy Feet: a short history of tap

12 May 2018 9:00 am

Fire up YouTube on the iPad, tap in ‘tap’, then wave goodbye to the rest of your day: clip after…

How do these Shaolin monks square six shows a week with monking?

How do these Shaolin monks square six shows a week with monking?

14 April 2018 9:00 am

The Shaolin monks are no strangers to the stage. Their home in Dengfeng is a major stop on the Chinese…

Paying homage to the seated diva: a still from the 2016 documentary about La Chana

Louise Levene meets the tormented queen of flamenco, who bewitched Dali & Peter Sellers

3 March 2018 9:00 am

A frail old woman sits alone on a chair on a darkened stage. There are flowers in her hair. She…

The men give the women little to work with: Giselle reviewed

24 February 2018 9:00 am

A bumper fortnight for Covent Garden florists thanks to a 20th-anniversary flower shower for the Royal Ballet’s Marianela Nunez and…

Wayne’s world

28 October 2017 9:00 am

Ballet would have been an obvious revenue stream for Sadler’s Wells when it reopened back in 1998 but straight-up classics…

Dancers of the Royal Ballet in Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Pretty vacant

7 October 2017 9:00 am

Alice is at it again. Christopher Wheeldon’s 2011 three-act ballet began another sell-out run at Covent Garden last week. It’s…

Bring on the dancing-girls: Follies at the Oliver

Age concern

16 September 2017 9:00 am

Stephen Sondheim’s Follies takes a huge leap into the past. It’s 1971 and we meet two middle-aged couples who knew…

The glorious Grand Pas from Paquita, part of the Mariinsky’s triple bill

Not vintage Mariinsky

19 August 2017 9:00 am

Not really a vintage Mariinsky season — an odd choice of repertoire and some hit-and-miss male casting — but the…

Mad about the boy

5 August 2017 9:00 am

Tall, handsome boys with long legs and beautifully arched feet do not grow on trees (if only). Every ballet director…

Miranda Richardson in Robert Wilson’s 1996 production of Orlando for the EIF

Show up and show off

29 July 2017 9:00 am

The Edinburgh Festival was founded as a response to war. The inaugural event, held in 1947, was the brainchild of…

They like to move it: voguing at Club a la Mode, New York, 1998

Yes sir, we can boogie

15 July 2017 9:00 am

It’s dance — but not as you know it. A giddy mass of flying limbs, sashaying hips and pouty faces.…

Victoria Sibson as Bertha Mason and Javier Torres as Edward Rochester in Cathy Marston’s ‘Jane Eyre’

Northern Ballet has triumphed with Brontë: Jane Eyre reviewed

4 June 2016 9:00 am

The difference between a poor ballet of the book (see the Royal Ballet’s Frankenstein) and a good one — indeed…

Predictably meh: Scottish Ballet’s new Swan Lake reviewed

7 May 2016 9:00 am

Every ballet company wants a box-office earner. But why Scottish Ballet’s leader Christopher Hampson kept on at David Dawson until…

A new dance piece in which race definitely matters: Ballet Black’s Triple Bill reviewed

2 April 2016 9:00 am

Ballet’s romantic mantra could be summed up by John Keats’s ballad ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, in which a young…

I felt the earth move just as before: Akram Khan’s Kaash reviewed

19 March 2016 9:00 am

You revisit an old love with wariness. Time’s passed for both of you — sharp edges have been smoothed, and…

Now that's what I call sex: Birmingham Royal Ballet's Ashton Double Bill reviewed

5 March 2016 9:00 am

That joke about the young bull who tells the old bull, ‘Hey, Dad, see all those cows — let’s run…

Fallen woman: Natalia Osipova as Amélie Gautreau

Wheeldon’s new ballet lacks guts: Royal Ballet’s Strapless reviewed

20 February 2016 9:00 am

How could it possibly go wrong? The magnetic, seething Russian star Natalia Osipova playing the tragic woman in John Singer…

Gorgeous, visionary sights from Akram Khan at the Roundhouse

6 February 2016 9:00 am

How much of a compromise does a fashionable choreographer loved by all have to make with his paymasters? When he’s…

We’re entering a new era for dance - expect big ballets with big stories

16 January 2016 9:00 am

Dance has its own archaeological periods, and 2016’s schedules are confirming what 2015 indicated — that the era of dances…

Why did a Russian ballet dancer throw acid in his boss’s face?

12 December 2015 9:00 am

The 16th June 1961 and 17th January 2013 are two indelible dates in the annals of Russian ballet. Two events…

Is Twitter now in charge of the Royal Ballet’s artistic programming?

5 December 2015 9:00 am

For all the billing and cooing on public forums about the Royal Ballet’s The Two Pigeons revival, there’s a silent…

Rambert Dance: one piercing masterpiece - and one dud

21 November 2015 9:00 am

Mark Baldwin, artistic director of Rambert Dance, must take responsibility for most of the good times I’ve had recently, midwife…

Carlos Acosta’s incoherent Carmen is a disaster

7 November 2015 9:00 am

The love that asks no questions, the love that pays the price… The amount of unconditional love sloshing about at…

This Juliet needs a new Romeo

29 October 2015 9:00 am

You always remember your first time, don’t you? And in ballet one imagines that Juliet wants to remember her first…

Giselle has floored many a ballerina — it did so again last week

17 October 2015 8:00 am

English has all sorts of emotive metaphors for how we feel about the ground. We’re floored. Or well grounded. Or…