Siobhan Murphy is a freelance writer, reviewer and editor, based in London. Between 2005 and 2014 she was London Metro's arts editor. She also contributes to LondonDance and tweets sporadically at @blacktigerlily.
Under are the articles written for DanceTabs.
Forced Entertainment – Out of Order – London
★★★✰✰ 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.
Oona Doherty – Hard to Be Soft: A Belfast Prayer – London
★★★★★ 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.
Gisele Vienne – Crowd – London
★★★★✰ 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.
Gary Clarke Company – Wasteland – London
★★★✰✰ Clarke doesn’t pull any punches with his ending …once again, a community is left defiant but defeated.
Boy Blue – Redd – London
★★★✰✰ 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.
Olga Pericet – The Thorn That Wanted to Be a Flower, or The Flower That Dreamed of Being a Dancer – London
★★★★★ The Cordoban star Olga Pericet’s poetically titled show revealed, wonderfully, a personality too big for flamenco to hold.
Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras – Sombras – London
★★★★★ Baras’s improvisations were not outpourings of emotion, but concentrated bursts of pure skill, passionately channelled.
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Hobson’s Choice – London
★★★★✰ 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 – Left Unseen and The Rite of Spring – London
★★✰✰✰ 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 – ROH, Young Talent Festival, mixed bill – London
★★★★✰ Royal Ballet School at the ROH Young Talent Festival with a mixed bill of over 10, new and old works…
Birmingham Royal Ballet – [Un]leashed: Lyric Pieces, Sense of Time, Peter and the Wolf – London
★★★✰✰ Overall, invigorating; a demonstration of the company’s healthy enthusiasm for innovation and playing with the form…
Norwegian National Ballet 2 – ROH, Young Talent Festival, Quint Bill – London
★★★✰✰ 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
Arthur Pita, Natalia Osipova and Jonathan Goddard – The Mother – London
★★★★✰ 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.
San Francisco Ballet – Bespoke, Hummingbird and Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming – London
★★★★✰ the overall impression was of the wholly American spirit of the company – peppy, vivacious, determined and running at full-tilt.
TAO Dance Theater – 4 & 9 – London
★★★★✰ There is something verging on the mystical about Tao Ye’s rigorously minimalist dance creations. The Beijing-based choreographer’s Numerical Series has stripped back dance to an almost forensic study…
Rambert – PreSentient, Rouge, In Your Rooms – London
★★★✰✰ The bill is a bold statement of intent – but a little underwhelming in reality.
Deborah Colker Dance Company – Dog Without Feathers – London
★★★✰✰ It’s hard to tear your eyes away from the filmed sequences – which means the live dance element rather loses out.
Israel Galván – La Fiesta – London
★★★★✰ Much like his previous show, FLA.CO.MEN, with which it shares quite a few elements, this was 90 minutes of never knowing quite what was going to happen next…
Damien Jalet & Kohei Nawa – Vessel – London
★★★★✰ The tableaux recall Francis Bacon paintings – and Goya in his darkest moments.
Lost Dog – Juliet & Romeo – London
★★★★✰ What if the star cross’d lovers hadn’t died, but had run away, got married, had a child, reached middle age and hit a relationship crisis?
