★★★★✰ ...an unexpected, joyful delight, performed with skill and nonchalance...
Author - Lynette Halewood
At least there are some memorable performances to recall from 2021: at the beginning of the year none of us had any idea when we might sit in a theatre and watch live dance again...
★★★★✰ With his Nutcracker! Matthew Bourne really wants the audience to have a good time and he knows how to deliver it...
★★✰✰✰ Akram Khan’s UK premiere of Outwitting the Devil is an exasperating puzzle. Opaque hints of mythological narrative offer challenges to the viewer; but it also contains some beautiful, sculptural moments and gorgeously fluent, liquid moments.
★★★★✰ "Uttarayan, a kite festival from Gujarat in northern India, is the inspiration for Kattam Katti... It’s cheering right now to see something celebratory and good-humoured, and the audience adored it."
★★★✰✰ All Jose Agudo tells us is that he has drawn on Prosper Merimée’s novella. But the operatic version casts a long shadow in our minds...
★★★★✰ the company pulled off an uplifting performance with energy and charm.
★★★✰✰ Putting together a new company and getting new work made for it is commendably ambitious at the best of times. Joseph Toonga and his collaborators can feel proud, as can the dancers: they were articulate, enthusiastic, committed and hard working.
It all started promisingly... And then there was lockdown and everything stopped. We had no idea of how events would play out. Surely this was going to be just for a couple of months?
★★★★✰ This is very much a film: though it is based on an earlier Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui work 'When I’m Laid in Earth', its dreamlike tone and unnerving effects owe much to Thomas James’s imaginative camerawork and his interest in the supernatural...
★★★★✰ Deluxe by BalletBoyz can be seen online on Sadler’s Wells Facebook Premieres from Friday 27 March, 7.30pm for one week only, and upcoming on BBC Four for BBC Culture in Quarantine (date tba).
★★✰✰✰ Rambert dancers on stage perform with great energy and commitment but the whole thing doesn’t manage to live up to its ambitious objectives...
★★★★✰ 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.
Lynette Halewood with some reflections on London dance performances over the last year - the good and the less good...
★★★✰✰ 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.
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ ...exemplary performances from Momoko Hirata as Giselle and César Morales as Albrecht make for a richly rewarding and moving experience.
★★★✰✰ '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.
★★★★✰ It’s another remarkable achievement from Maliphant, conjuring poetry out of a bare stage, light and movement.
★★★★✰ A charismatic and compelling performance and a forensic examination of embattled masculinity, holding the attention throughout with unflagging energy.