★★★✰✰ Sung Im Her’s Nutcrusher is a dance work which adds a valuable contribution to the #metoo movement with its gritty aesthetics and undoing of the sexually coded body.
Author - Josephine Leask
★★★✰✰ Gregory Maqoma’s theatrical storytelling, a potent mix of a capella, dance styles and scenography, projects a strong universal theme - grief.
★★★★✰ Fascinating for the duration of its 50 mins, Split focusses on duality – charting the shifts between Ashley McLellan and Lilian Steiner as they negotiate their space, timing, movement and relationship.
★★✰✰✰ Seven international companies appeared on the Sadler’s Wells main stage, all of whom are prize winners of the bi-annual international competition Danse Élargie: Dance Expanded - the brain wave of Boris Charmatz and director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota...
★★★★✰ Masilo and company unpack this famous story of a wronged woman, establishing a refreshingly black, South African and feminist perspective.
★★★✰✰ Baal conveys a convincing Brechtian essence framed through a contemporary gaze. It’s an intriguing work that celebrates the company’s wild creativity...
Interview - Claire Cunningham's latest work "Thank You Very Much" uses the phenomenon of Elvis Presley and Elvis tribute artists as a springboard to explore impersonation, identity, acceptance and the challenges of being yourself. Josephine Leask finds out more from the lively Cunningham...
★★★★✰ Juliet and Romeo is a clever work on many different levels.
★★★★✰ Over the years that I’ve seen them, this extraordinary company of quirky individuals have become more adventurous about what they perform and flexible in how they perform...
★★★★✰ Three short but densely packed ballets infused with a strong Russian flavour were at the heart of the Royal Ballet’s last bill of the season.
★★★✰✰ Rite of Spring: Through the perspective of a South Asian gaze, the brutality and finality of the original ballet’s pagan sacrifice is tempered by a rich spirituality and the optimistic suggestion of an after-life. It’s still scary but less barbaric.
★★★✰✰ Nora's show combines a piece made by Hay for the company followed by a short lecture-demonstration in which they guide us through different frames for watching dance – inspired from their viewing of Hay making a solo.
★★★★✰ What unfolds over the two hours is an extraordinary conversation between musician and dancers.
★★★✰✰ Even as I leave the show not really having understood every bit of it, I’m touched by the multi-skilled performers and their unforced honesty.
★★★✰✰ Woman SRSLY’s feminist energy exploded all over the Place last Thursday. The foyer and bar area were transformed into a colourful pink fun-fair.
★★★★✰ Vincent Dance Theatre’s visceral and timely response to how social media is wrecking our children, hypersexualising them and stealing their childhood co-opts the very technology that it warns us about.
★★★★✰ Cousins and company both surprise and stir us.
★★★★✰ Papaioannou weaves in many references to Bausch’s work and deliberately asks us to find them, the work is fuelled by his love for her. But he also invites us to move on from the nostalgia trip.
★★★★✰ Performed by a cast of seventeen children ranging from ages 5 – 15, Forced Entertainment’s delightfully humorous and poignant work reveals how adults shape children through their projection of values and beliefs.
★★★★✰ Luke Brown Dance’s For You I Long the Longest is an intense and intimate work that needs to be experienced in a small, contained theatre.