Umanoove / Didy Veldman – The Happiness Project – Bracknell
★★★✰✰ Veldman sure knows how to pick all the right ingredients for a dance show – but they really need presenting in a less cryptic way than they are here. But do go to see great contemporary dancers and a great violinist strut their stuff and enjoy it for that…
5 Questions to Didy Veldman – on forming and touring her new company, Umanoove
Choreographer Didy Veldman has just formed her own company – Umanoove – and is off touring her latest work, called “The Happiness Project”. Time for a brief 5 questions interview we thought…
Nitin Sawhney with special guests Sebastien Ramirez and Honji Wang – Concert – London
★★★★✰ It’d be a misnomer to call the evening a dance show – I was hoping Wang Ramirez would have more stage time than they did …but it was a cohesive production in any case, with some bracing, if fleeting, choreography on offer.
Eastman / Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui – Fractus V – London
★★★★✰ The work itself is a statement of faith that collaboration is better than confrontation. Each dancer has a powerful presence but Cherkaoui has forged a remarkable unity from these disparate elements…
Fall For Dance Festival – Program 2: Richard Alston, Aszure Barton, Wendy Whelan, Edward Watson, Grupo Corpo – New York
★★★✰✰ One of this recurring festival’s strongest selling selling points is the serendipity of its pairings. You pay $15 and get a grab-bag of dance in return. You’re bound to like something.
The Holy Body Tattoo – monumental – New York
★★✰✰✰ There are times when you wonder if bones have been broken, or organs perforated. On the whole however, the hour and a half work is largely characterised by the violent, repetitive and neurotic gestures.
Book – Peter Wright: Wrights and Wrongs – my life in dance
His is an insider’s account, complete with waspish comments and cameos of the famous people he encountered…
Emio Greco – Choreographer and Director on Ballet National de Marseille’s Body.Dance.Nation.City and more
5 Questions to Emio Greco, choreographer and director of Ballet National de Marseille (with Pieter C. Scholten) on their “Body.Dance.Nation.City” which is being presented at London’s Southbank Centre later this week – 5-6 August 2016
Ballet Hispanico – Flabbergast, Bury Me Standing, Club Havana – New York
★★★★✰ Anyone in need of resurrecting their libido need look no further than Ballet Hispanico’s 45th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater…
Compania Rocio Molina – Danzaora & Vinática – New York
★★★★★ Molina and her musicians capture flamenco’s traditional spirit and show its future…
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch – …como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si… – London
★★★✰✰ Like all Pina Bausch’s pieces based on her company’s residencies in different cities, this one (which translates as ‘like moss on a stone’), inspired by Chile, is tantalising in its references.
Gallery – Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in …como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si…
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
Big Dance Theater – Big Dance: Short Form bill – New York
Every once in a while, an audience exits a theatre feeling deeply alive. Lit. Satisfied. Big Dance Theater’s anniversary show is programmed with the canny sensibilities of a master chef…
Paris Opera Ballet – Polyphonia, Alea Sands, Le Sacre du printemps – Paris
Benjamin Millepied, the new director of the Paris Opera Ballet, made a daring choice of programme for the Christmas season at the opulent Palais Garnier opera house: a triple bill of contemporary works…
Phoenix Dance Theatre – Until.With / Out.Enough, Tearfall, Bloom – London
One essential factor in the current success of Phoenix is a cohort of excellent dancers…
H2DANCE – Staging Ages – London
Packed overfull with ideas, it’s a way of looking at how our behaviour changes over the years, while we continue to feel much the same inside.
Cas Public – Symphonie Dramatique – London
Blackburn has deconstructed the story of the play and the conventions of narrative dance. The only way to follow ‘the one-hour’s traffic of the stage’ is through video captions and quotations…
Royal Opera and Hofesh Shechter Company – Orphée et Eurydice – London
Hofesh Schechter joins the ranks of choreographers who have directed (or co-directed in Schechter’s case, along with John Fulljames) Gluck’s Orpheus opera: they include Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, Pina Bausch and Mark Morris, among others.
Philippe Decouflé Company DCA – Contact – London
It’s undoubtedly fun in Decouflé’s world… but you do start to wish someone would hold your hand through it for a while.
Sasha Waltz & Guests – d’avant – London
…d’avant is the collaborative work of four dancers-singers-creators: Sidi Larbi Charkaoui, Damien Jalet, Luc Dunberry and Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola. Waltz herself is not credited in the programme…
