★★★★✰ 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...
Author - Lynette Halewood
★★★✰✰ 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.
★★★★✰ 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...
★★★✰✰ 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.
Head and shoulders above other new work this year was Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern for the Royal Ballet...
★★✰✰✰ All the ingredients seemed promising but the evening was disappointing, struggling to recover from the tedium of the dire opening item...
★★✰✰✰ ...but item follows item in quick succession without cumulatively registering a bigger impact. It feels ultimately insubstantial.
★★★★✰ 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...
★★★✰✰ Origami is a work for a solo performer and a shipping container which slowly unfolds and reconfigures itself over forty minutes.
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★✰✰ 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...
★★★★✰ The thunderous finale pulls all the threads together with the entire cast on stage playing and dancing in a riotous sonic adventure.
★★★✰✰ 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.
★★★★★ 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.
★★★★✰ Men and Girls Dance is a touching and joyful demonstration of optimism about us humans in an increasingly bleak age.
★★★★✰ At first sight the two works in Aakash Odedra’s solo show at Sadler’s Wells Lilian Baylis Studio could hardly be more unalike.
★★★✰✰ Some titles for triple bills can be generic or aspirational rather than specific, but "Ham and Passion" is exactly what you get in this programme from DeNada Dance Theatre.
Lynette Halewood with her personal selection of London dance memories from the past year...
★★★✰✰ Peony Pavilion has become a signature work for the National Ballet of China and it’s easy to see why it has come back.
★★★✰✰ A piece of dance that takes Moby-Dick as its inspiration has to be worth seeing. Lynette Halewood at The Place in London to see "Leviathan" performed by James Wilton Dance...