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Under are the articles written for DanceTabs. Reviews on Balletco
BalletBoyz – Deluxe: The Intro, Bradley 4:18, Ripple – Online and TV
★★★★✰ 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 – 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.
