★★★★★ This Nutcracker carries the subtitle "A magical family adventure" and Scottish Ballet across the board deliver on that - it's certainly a production worth going out of your way to see.
Tag - Lez Brotherston
At least there are some memorable performances to recall from 2021: at the beginning of the year none of us had any idea when we might sit in a theatre and watch live dance again...
★★★★✰ "...this is not a feel-good show, celebrating the relaxation of lockdown. It’s about lonely people leading lives of quiet desperation, seeking consolation in alcohol and seedy sexual encounters."
★★★✰✰ Starstruck is subtitled "Gene Kelly's Love Letter to Ballet" - it's a ballet about jazzy dancing fizz and if that connects with us then its work is really done.
★★★★★ Scottish Ballet have come up with a delightfully life-affirming present to blow away the Covid blues this Christmas. It's not a film of an existing ballet, as we usually see at this time of year, but a ballet feature film - something made just for the camera and in which the camera is choreographed into the action. The result is a huge success...
★★★★✰ It doesn’t get much steamier than Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man, the third of his productions to be presented and screened on Sky Arts during lockdown.
★★★★✰ Performances across the board are stupendous, reminding us that interpretations evolve and change, and do not disappoint.
★★★★✰ Bruce Marriott takes a second look at Scottish Ballet's new Christmas hit - one day, two shows, many different dancers...
★★★★★ ...this revival of The Red Shoes, coming with a number of tweaks, appears even tighter and slicker than the original.
★★★★✰ Hampson has created a naturalistic and, above all, a graceful and harmonious set of steps. It's all so unforced, but it feels right and creates a beautifully rounded and satisfying production.
★★★✰✰ Our setting is the Verona Institute in the near future. Here disturbed young people have been locked up for an opaque purpose under the eye of a sadistic jailer... A traumatised Juliet meets a troubled Romeo, and it ends as badly as you might expect.
★★★★✰ Matthew Bourne has reworked his famous "Swan Lake" and it's now touring. Graham Watts wrestles with iconic and uber definitions in a long look at a much-loved work.
Scottish Ballet have just announced plans for their Fiftieth Anniversary in 2019, including three world premieres - we have the full press release and touch-base with CEO/Artistic Director Christopher Hampson about the celebrations and what happens beyond...
★★★★★ What Scottish Ballet wanted to do was take the full experience out to the Highlands and Islands. So the good folks in Lerwick (capital of the Shetland Isles, population 7,500) saw was the same show they got in Edinburgh and Glasgow...
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
Congratulations to all from DanceTabs...
★★★✰✰ While the production is supremely stylish and the characters well-observed with expressive and romantic choreography, the narrative is padded out in order to fill the music, particularly where traditional elements of "Cinderella" have been excised.
★★★★✰ A charming, uplifting ballet that truly sets the scene for Christmas. A large part of the heart-warming effect was Darrell’s decision to populate the stage with children...
★★★✰✰ At the end of the evening was what you might call the blockbuster piece of the tour - 30 minutes of Matthew Bourne in the form of Act II of his "Highland Fling". Bourne's take on "La Sylphide" is a wonderful piece of work, full of wit, style and pathos...
Graham Watts' citation, made before the presentation - a major appreciation of a huge star of dance and theatre...