★★★✰✰ Streamed live from the stage of Scottish Dance Theatre’s home at the Dundee Rep, The Life and Times provided an immersive and visceral hybrid of dance theatre, music video, art installation and silent cinema...
Author - Graham Watts
★★★✰✰ Lady Blackshirt is a patchwork of miniature films overlaid in eight chapters, lasting just over an hour: sub-titled ‘A Meditation on Modernism and Extremism’...
★★★✰✰ A double bill with a re-run of Hans van Manen’s 5 Tangos paired with the premiere of Firebirds (based on the Stravinsky score), this new work having the rare distinction of being created by an all-woman team led by choreographer Marianna Venekei.
★★★✰✰ The pandemic meant that the company’s home theatre will have to wait its turn before hosting The Three Sections, which instead premiered on a triangle of Zoom screens...
Graham Watts talks to the multi-talented and very much respected Dane Hurst as he is named as the new artistic director of ground breaking Phoenix Dance Theatre. Expect great things to come...
★★★✰✰ PNB kicked off their season in October with a gala that was the first performance on the McCaw Hall stage since February, a mixed programme that showcased an ensemble of excellent dancers in both classical and contemporary choreography...
★★★✰✰ This challenging 40-minute work is well worth perseverance since what at first seems a collection of random acts, builds together into a coherent enquiry into the process of being...
★★★★✰ 21 dance films, sourced from all over the globe and presented by Marquee TV in association with Screen.dance (Scotland’s Festival of dance on screen) and San Francisco Dance Film Festival.
★★★★✰ One silver lining to the pandemic has been getting to see companies online that I have been largely unfamiliar with and Ballet Hispanico is a real find...
★★★★✰ / ★★★★★ If there have been better examples of substantial dance films made during these trying times then I have yet to see them.
Dutch National Ballet, under director Ted Brandsen, have made a splendid response to COVID-19, streaming 8 new digital dances in the last 3 months. Graham Watts on many interesting and absorbing works, varying from ★★✰✰✰ to ★★★★★
Carlos Acosta chats to Graham Watts about how things are going after his first few months at the artistic helm of Birmingham Royal Ballet & the impact that Covid-19 has had on his plans...
★★★✰✰ No lockdown for Annabelle Lopez Ochoa who has just choreographed "Where do the birds go?" over five Zoom sessions with Norwegian National Ballet's Francois Rousseau and Julie Gardette in their Oslo living room...
★★★✰✰ Featuring works by Jonzi D, Theo Inart, Becky Namgauds and the due of Ffion Campbell-Davies and tyroneisaacstuart.
★★★✰✰ This inventive dance theatre summarises Oscar Wilde’s one-act play, which relates the Biblical story of Salomé and her unrequited feelings for Jokanaan...
★★★✰✰ Trying to understand a holistic approach to the narrative was like compiling a jigsaw where some of the pieces are missing and others don’t fit.
★★★★✰ Joan Clevillé’s direction deserves much praise. A solo show for more than an hour on such an esoteric subject is a difficult framework to sustain and Clevillé’s structure is expertly paced with quick transitions and surprising interludes.
★★★✰✰ The idea of setting a story about a refugee family to the songs of Sting was inevitably an enforced marriage of his diverse lyrics with a narrative for which they were never intended.
★★★✰✰ This was indeed a case of Up Close and personal with five intimate pieces variously dosed with Cuban fire and flair...
★★★★✰ This was much more than my expectation of an update to Broken Wings. Part prequel, part sequel; it now stands proudly alone as an excellent new addition to the Dutch ballet repertoire.