American Ballet Theatre – Harlequinade – New York
★★★★★ To my eye, this Harlequinade may be the most well-rounded of Ratmansky’s historically-minded stagings of Petipa.
Yorke Dance Project – Twenty: Playground, Between and Within, Communion, Imprint – London
★★★★✰ By swelling the numbers of her small touring company, Yolande Yorke-Edgell was able to mount a revival of Kenneth MacMillan’s Playground and a 10-strong ensemble for Robert Cohan’s Communion. The programme also included new works by Sophia Stoller and Yorke-Edgell herself.
Lauren Simpson Dance – Dance Exhibit – San Francisco
★★★★✰ I caught the show on closing night and saw a terrific company debut filled with collaboration, rigor and a connection to the visual art community.
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Seasons in our World, Peter and the Wolf – Cheltenham
★★★✰✰ Bintley feels strongly about tradition (much more so than most other directors) and the commissions are his way of saying what’s important and passing that baton on.
5 Questions to Myles Thatcher about a different take on ballet and working on Scottish Ballet’s Digital Season
www.instagram.com/mylesthatcher www.sfballet.org Scottish Ballet’s Digital Season: 16 May – 16 June 2019 Myles Thatcher is a choreographer and dancer with San Francisco Ballet who’s created a stir there, and elsewhere in North…
Rambert – PreSentient, Rouge, In Your Rooms – London
★★★✰✰ The bill is a bold statement of intent – but a little underwhelming in reality.
Parsons Dance – Round My World, Eight Women, Runes, Caught, Nascimento – New York
★★★★✰ I can’t recall ever leaving a theater after seeing a Trey McIntyre work, and not feeling better about things.
Gallery – Deborah Colker Dance Company in Dog Without Feathers
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
Viviana Durante Company – THREE/8.38/SEVEN – London
★★✰✰✰ The show at Wilton’s Music Hall, produced and directed by former ballerina Viviana Durante, was originally billed as The Seven Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht…
Yang Liping – Rite of Spring – London
★★★✰✰ As with most retellings, Liping’s centres on a young woman destined to dance herself to death. However, the dancemaker has invoked Buddhist principles, including the concept of reincarnation…
Royal Ballet – Within the Golden Hour, Medusa, Flight Pattern – London
★★★✰✰ A very mixed bill… Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Medusa (★★✰✰✰), Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour (★★★★✰) and Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern (★★★★✰)
Dorrance Dance – ETM: Double Down – San Francisco
★★★★✰ Dorrance Dance have a winning formula – creative innovation, dynamic physical feats, engaging stage presence and feet that move at superhuman speeds.
Catching up with Morgann Runacre-Temple – work for Scottish Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet and more
A busy time for Morgann Runacre-Temple with work for Scottish Ballet’s Digital Season, Stuttgart Ballet’s Noverre Young Choreographers Evening, English National Ballet and also her recent Northern Ballet commission will be touring again. She stops to answer 5 questions…
New York City Ballet – All Balanchine quad bill including Scotch Symphony – New York
★★★★✰ There’s a reason why New York City Ballet doesn’t do George Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony very often. It’s a strangely disjointed ballet…
Kiera Martin – Sadler’s Wells Wild Card series: Where Ye From – London
★★★✰✰ It was one of those evenings without an obvious beginning or end…
Gallery – Royal Ballet in Medusa, Within the Golden Hour, Flight Pattern
Works by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Christopher Wheeldon and Crystal Pite. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
Deborah Colker Dance Company – Dog Without Feathers – London
★★★✰✰ It’s hard to tear your eyes away from the filmed sequences – which means the live dance element rather loses out.
Carlos Acosta splendidly summed up as he collects his Critics’ Circle Services to the Arts award
I was at the recent Critics’ Circle lunch when Carlos Acosta won his latest award and was struck by Graham Watts citation – it seemed to splendidly sum up Carlos, both the man and his illustrious career… and why exactly we all admire him. BM, Ed.
San Francisco Ballet – Shostakovich Trilogy – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ The choreography in Shostakovich Trilogy, which was co-commissioned by SFB and ABT and premiered in 2014, is as frustratingly capricious as the music.
English National Ballet – Emerging Dancer Competition 2019 – London
★★★✰✰ The 2019 winner is London-born Julia Conway and her success was well deserved.
