Words needed.
Under are the articles written for DanceTabs. Reviews on Balletco
Julie Cunningham, Botis Seva and Alesandra Seutin – Reckonings bill – London
★★★✰✰ Reckonings celebrates the 20th anniversary of the reopening of Sadler’s Wells after its rebuild. Rather than commemorate previous successes, it presents three new works commissioned from emerging UK choreographers as a deliberate statement of belief in the future.
Seeta Patel – Not Today’s Yesterday – London
★★★✰✰ This is a sincere and deeply felt attempt to show us how history gets rewritten to demonise some and exalt others.
Shane Shambhu / Altered Skin – Confessions of a Cockney Temple Dancer – London
★★★✰✰ It’s easy to warm to Shane Shambhu and to laugh along with him, but though the journey was entertaining it doesn’t seem to reach an entirely clear conclusion.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (Trocks) – Les Sylphides bill – London
★★★★✰ The curtain calls for Robert Carter’s “Dying Swan” are nearly as long as the ballet itself and just as funny.
5 Questions to Seeta Patel about her latest work – Not Today’s Yesterday
Seeta Patel is about to tour the UK with her latest one-woman dance theatre work, “Not Today’s Yesterday” – it’s about the “whitewashing of history” and we wanted to know more…
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Romeo and Juliet – London
★★★★✰ It was a fine team performance from the company but particular honours go to Momoko Hirata’s Juliet who let us know what she was thinking and feeling at every moment.
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan – Formosa – London
★★★★✰ Formosa means beautiful, and is how Portuguese sailors described the island of Taiwan when they reached it in the sixteenth century. It is the title of the latest work by Lin Hwai-Min, his final creation before retiring as Artistic Director of the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre…
Malavika Sarukkai – Thari, The Loom – London
★★★✰✰ The inspiration for bharatanatyam dancer Malavika Sarukkai to create her group work Thari – The Loom came from the hand weavers of Kanchipuram in India and the elaborately patterned saris that they produce.
Russell Maliphant Company – maliphantworks2: Critical Mass, Two Times Two, Still, Duet – London
★★★★✰ Duet, the new work for Maliphant and Fouras closes the programme. This has a surprisingly eclectic soundtrack. After bursts of static as if from a radio, a vintage recording of Una furtive lacrima tenderly sung by Caruso…
María Pagés Compañía – Yo Carmen – London
★★★✰✰ Yo Carmen was originally billed as a radical reimagining of Bizet’s opera and that’s not exactly the case. Don’t go along to this thinking that you will see any representation of the story with gypsies and bullfighters, or any male characters dancing.
Memorable Performances of 2017 – London
Head and shoulders above other new work this year was Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern for the Royal Ballet…
Ivan Putrov – Men in Motion (2017) – London
★★✰✰✰ All the ingredients seemed promising but the evening was disappointing, struggling to recover from the tedium of the dire opening item…
H2Dance – Staging Ages – London
★★✰✰✰ …but item follows item in quick succession without cumulatively registering a bigger impact. It feels ultimately insubstantial.
Darbar Festival London: Indian Adventures of Sitar and Dance bill with Mangaldas, Khoo and Banerjee
★★★★✰ The Darbar Festival has been celebrating Indian classical music for a number of years, but now at Sadler’s Wells it has an additional dance component curated by Akram Khan, showcasing different forms…
Satchie Noro & Silvain Ohl – Origami – London
★★★✰✰ Origami is a work for a solo performer and a shipping container which slowly unfolds and reconfigures itself over forty minutes.
The Farm – Cockfight – London
★★★★✰ The devisers of the work have a keen eye and ear for the inanities of corporate management-speak and the way that bruising encounters can sometimes be punctuated by faux bonhomie.
2Faced Dance Company – Outlands bill – London
★★★✰✰ There has been much discussion on the marked lack of opportunities for female choreographers. Tamsin Fitzgerald, Artistic Director of 2Faced Dance Company, has rolled up her sleeves and set to work over the last two years to do something practical about it. The result is Outlands…
Dorrance Dance – ETM: Double Down – London
★★★★✰ The thunderous finale pulls all the threads together with the entire cast on stage playing and dancing in a riotous sonic adventure.
Sadler’s Wells Elixir Festival – KnowBody II – London
★★★✰✰ Mats Ek’s “Axe” could be the beginning to a new Scandi Noir TV series. There is a man, an axe, a huge pile of wood that he starts to chop with repressed intensity and a visibly distressed wife. It doesn’t look like it will end well.
Akram Khan Company – Desh – London
★★★★★ This is Khan’s own personal story, but it achieves a much wider resonance about how we can learn to reconcile ourselves to our past, and to acknowledge where and what we come from as we mature.
