★★★★✰ As tentative steps continue to get the dance world back on its feet, the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield has asked three companies to embrace the possibilities of lockdown with a trio of filmed works.
Author - Siobhan Murphy
★★★★✰ Family ties were explored in two markedly different ways in this hip hop dance double bill.
★★★★✰ Although starkly different in theme and intention, both 13 Tongues and Dust showcased the company’s unique blend of movement, drawn from classical and modern traditions...
★★★★✰ It’s thrilling to see the building confidence of Carlos Acosta’s Cuban-based dance company. There’s a sense of cohesion, shared purpose and a unique identity drawn from a vibrant range of influences.
★★★✰✰ Once again, Osipova gave it her all – and Osipova’s all is quite something to behold.
★★★✰✰ A disarmingly odd blend of narrative theatre, philosophical debate and experimental performance.
★★★✰✰ A devised work, it pits six clowns against each other – a rancorous superannuated troupe locked in a queasy co-dependent relationship despite the fact they loathe each other.
★★★★★ The dance artist Oona Doherty was transplanted to Belfast from London aged ten, and there was the gaze of a curious outsider about Hard to Be Soft.
★★★★✰ You have to marvel at the skill and precision of the 15 dancers in Crowd, the creation of the Franco-Austrian choreographer Gisele Vienne and the opening show of this year’s Dance Umbrella festival.
★★★✰✰ Clarke doesn’t pull any punches with his ending ...once again, a community is left defiant but defeated.
★★★✰✰ Redd is another bold exploration of the storytelling potential of hip-hop dance, which succeeds in showing that beyond the crowd-pleasing tricks, this form can mine powerful, complex, gutsy emotions.
★★★★★ The Cordoban star Olga Pericet's poetically titled show revealed, wonderfully, a personality too big for flamenco to hold.
★★★★★ Baras’s improvisations were not outpourings of emotion, but concentrated bursts of pure skill, passionately channelled.
★★★★✰ Big-hearted, whimsical, suffused with equal parts romance and drollness, Hobson’s Choice is a gem of the BRB repertoire – long may it keep being revived.
★★✰✰✰ Phoenix Dance Theatre’s The Rite of Spring came with tantalising credentials: the company’s first collaboration with Opera North, and a UK debut for the Haitian choreographer Jeanguy Saintus...
★★★★✰ Royal Ballet School at the ROH Young Talent Festival with a mixed bill of over 10, new and old works...
★★★✰✰ Overall, invigorating; a demonstration of the company’s healthy enthusiasm for innovation and playing with the form...
★★★✰✰ Norwegian National Ballet 2 at the ROH Young Talent Festival with 5 works - Departures, Valse-Fantaisie, Pas de Sept from A Folk Tale, Some See Stages, Left from Write
★★★★✰ The Mother takes already dark source material (a Hans Christian Andersen tale) and plunges even deeper into the nightmare scenario it proposes, giving everything a convincing Russian twist along the way.
★★★★✰ the overall impression was of the wholly American spirit of the company – peppy, vivacious, determined and running at full-tilt.