Words needed.
Under are the articles written for DanceTabs. Reviews on Balletco
New Adventures – Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet – London
★★★✰✰ 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.
Dutch National Ballet Junior Company – ROH, Young Talent Festival, Quint bill – London
★★★✰✰ Dutch National Ballet Junior Company at the ROH Young Talent Festival with 5 works – No Time Before Time, Fuse, What Got You Here, Fingers in the Air and In The Future.
Junior Ballett Zürich – Young Talent Festival: Echo of Elements, Wounded, Submerge – London
★★★✰✰ The twelve dancers are a mix of nationalities, attractive, lively and energetic, fortunately possessing the stamina required to get through a demanding programme.
San Francisco Ballet – Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem, Bound To, Anima Animus – London
★★★★✰ It’s been a treat to see so much new work made specifically for a company. The dancers are free, unburdened by the weight of history and expectation, with no comparisons to be made to famous past performers or interpretations. It’s all theirs.
Cas Public – 9 – London
★★✰✰✰ Cas Public’s 9, now at the Linbury Theatre is a curious mix, big ideas but flawed execution.
National Dance Company Wales – Awakening: Tundra, Afterimage, Revellers’ Mass – London
★★★✰✰ It’s quite a mixed evening. The standout item is the final piece, Revellers’ Mass by the company’s resident choreographer, Caroline Finn.
Charles Atlas, Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener – Tesseract – London
★★★✰✰ Tesseract is a curious, sometimes disorienting mix of film, live dance, and projections of filmed live dance.
Sadler’s Wells Sampled, 2019 – London
★★★✰✰ Once a year Sadler’s Wells puts on Sampled, a pick and mix of the types of dance you might see at the venue. The front stalls seats are taken out, and standing in that area is only a fiver, with cheap tickets in general.
English National Ballet – Manon – London
★★★★✰ The entire cast is committed to the MacMillan idea of everyone having their own character and story, and the result is a richly detailed picture of the conflicts between poverty and wealth, love and lust.
Memorable Performances of 2018 – London
Semperoper Ballett Dresden were another new visitor in the summer, with a programme of Forsythe works, some not seen here before. But Forsythe is a theme this year in himself.
GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui & Antony Gormley – Noetic – London
★★★★✰ Noetic was created in 2014 for the company by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui working with his frequent collaborator sculptor Antony Gormley.
Sujata Mohapatraa and Gauri Diwakar at Darbar 2018 – Adventures in Odissi and Kathak – London
★★★★✰ The evening allowed us to observe the differences between the expressive delicacy of the Odissi storytelling and the more expansive and speedy space-devouring moves of Kathak. Each had its distinct flavour with different qualities to enjoy.
James Wilton Dance – The Storm – London
★★★✰✰ The Storm grapples with feeling low, becoming depressed and the tempest like outbursts which can follow.
Julie Cunningham, Botis Seva and Alesandra Seutin – Reckonings bill – London
★★★✰✰ Reckonings celebrates the 20th anniversary of the reopening of Sadler’s Wells after its rebuild. Rather than commemorate previous successes, it presents three new works commissioned from emerging UK choreographers as a deliberate statement of belief in the future.
Seeta Patel – Not Today’s Yesterday – London
★★★✰✰ This is a sincere and deeply felt attempt to show us how history gets rewritten to demonise some and exalt others.
Shane Shambhu / Altered Skin – Confessions of a Cockney Temple Dancer – London
★★★✰✰ It’s easy to warm to Shane Shambhu and to laugh along with him, but though the journey was entertaining it doesn’t seem to reach an entirely clear conclusion.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (Trocks) – Les Sylphides bill – London
★★★★✰ The curtain calls for Robert Carter’s “Dying Swan” are nearly as long as the ballet itself and just as funny.
5 Questions to Seeta Patel about her latest work – Not Today’s Yesterday
Seeta Patel is about to tour the UK with her latest one-woman dance theatre work, “Not Today’s Yesterday” – it’s about the “whitewashing of history” and we wanted to know more…
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Romeo and Juliet – London
★★★★✰ It was a fine team performance from the company but particular honours go to Momoko Hirata’s Juliet who let us know what she was thinking and feeling at every moment.
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan – Formosa – London
★★★★✰ 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…
