...though I don’t believe it’s a great work of art, there’s no denying that it’s fun.
Reviews
Reviews of Dance and Ballet Performances
Some experiments sound better on paper - especially when one admires the artist behind them - than they turn out to be in reality.
Noirish, chilling, and wry, provocative, perturbing and electrifying, it (Amanimal) was a fitting winner of the 2013 Auckland Fringe Awards for Best Dance Production
Like the Stravinsky score, HUNT is a tour de force. The monumental orchestral chants of The Rite inspired the choreographer to create a dance-as-ritual in which music, movement, and multimedia blend together...
Ideological qualms aside, White Haired Girl is an odd bird. The choreography is a hybrid between textbook classical vocabulary and Chinese opera, an idea interesting in itself but here executed with a lack of imagination...
Despite the title, Bawren Tavaziva’s latest work is not so much about Greed as it is about the full house of deadly sins (bestial lust and envy being especially to the fore).
Beloved Renegade - I’d venture to say that this is one of Taylor’s great works, heartfelt, profound, complex and deeply musical.
Kate Denborough and Gerard Van Dyck have maintained a successful collaboration for 15 years, and, prosthetics aside, this work can also be seen as a personal exploration of their professional partnership.
I've seen 'There is Hope' twice now and want to again - there is so much to unpack. ...It's a beautifully-crafted piece with the band an integral part of the telling - as much as the dancers. It deserves a lot more touring...
There is a mysterious exoticism in Scottish Dance Theatre’s delivery of work by two innovative choreographers (one hails from LA, the other from Norway) whose work is largely unknown in the UK.
Well, it isn’t ballet and it isn’t revolutionary but it is fun...
Opening night was a gala performance; one might have expected Esplanade, or Arden Court, but that’s just not Taylor’s style. For a choreographer who has been criticized for being too popular in his tastes, Taylor can be very odd indeed.
The Royal Danish Ballet's Dans2Go, year 3. As previously, the aim is to give newcomers a taste of different types of dance, at low prices...
From Foreign Lands: "This amusing, yet subtle send-up of classical ballet is rewarding in its expertly-shaped choreography, and made all the more appealing by the slight wackiness of the costumes and visual jokes."
All up, I came out entertained and it's a piece that will endure. And if all the company can conqueror Act 1 there will be smiling families all the way, I think - smiling at the drama and the movement.
Possokhov’s Rite of Spring is a mixture of mostly good choices with a few that seem rather odd to me.
Of this year's 4 premieres, 2 very much connected with me and 2 didn't.
The Swan (2008), a duet created by the company’s artistic director Lára Stefánsdóttir, turned out to be the most intriguing and theatrically effective dance on the program.
Even more than with other choreographers, the costumes and sets are essential elements of Graham’s dance imagination. Think of Martha’s stretchy sack-dress in Lamentation, or the prickly metal tree-dress by Noguchi in Cave of the Heart. They are extensions of the dancers’ bodies, and of Graham’s Jungian world-view.
This triple bill, with two world premieres, shows how ably choreographers 85 years apart can refresh the language of classical ballet without distorting it beyond recognition.