Words needed.
Under are the articles written for DanceTabs. Reviews on Balletco
Rambert – Aisha and Abhaya – London
★★✰✰✰ Rambert dancers on stage perform with great energy and commitment but the whole thing doesn’t manage to live up to its ambitious objectives…
English National Ballet – Le Corsaire – London
★★★★✰ It’s not the kind of work that will persuade anyone that ballet can be a subtle, nuanced and poetic art, but it is cracking entertainment and a treat in a dreary month.
Some Memorable Performances of 2019 – London
Lynette Halewood with some reflections on London dance performances over the last year – the good and the less good…
Mavin Khoo & Temple of Fine Arts – unnamed dance inspired by the Ramayana – London
★★★✰✰ Mavin Khoo doesn’t appear on stage here: the work has been made on dancers from the Temple of Fine Arts Inner Space Dance, based in Malaysia.
Just Us Dance Theatre / Joseph Toonga – Born To Manifest – London
★★★★✰ This is a thoughtful and nuanced depiction of how complex and fraught identity can be in Britain today, put across with meaty, muscular force by two charismatic performers.
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Giselle – London
★★★★✰ …exemplary performances from Momoko Hirata as Giselle and César Morales as Albrecht make for a richly rewarding and moving experience.
Thomas Lebrun – Another Look at Memory – London
★★★✰✰ ‘Another Look at Memory’ is a cool, precise, rigorous piece, set to Philip Glass’s choral work ‘Another Look at Harmony”, finding a language in dance and gesture which responds to, and reflects on, the music’s minimalism.
Russell Maliphant Dance Company – Silent Lines – London
★★★★✰ It’s another remarkable achievement from Maliphant, conjuring poetry out of a bare stage, light and movement.
Oona Doherty – Hope Hunt & The Ascension Into Lazarus – London
★★★★✰ A charismatic and compelling performance and a forensic examination of embattled masculinity, holding the attention throughout with unflagging energy.
Dane Hurst and Tom Rowland – Falling Man – London
★★★★✰ Falling Man is a huge achievement, performed with intensity and charisma, and we really need to see it again in our theatres.
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.
