Yorke Dance Project – Twenty: Playground, Between and Within, Communion, Imprint – London
★★★★✰ By swelling the numbers of her small touring company, Yolande Yorke-Edgell was able to mount a revival of Kenneth MacMillan’s Playground and a 10-strong ensemble for Robert Cohan’s Communion. The programme also included new works by Sophia Stoller and Yorke-Edgell herself.
Lauren Simpson Dance – Dance Exhibit – San Francisco
★★★★✰ I caught the show on closing night and saw a terrific company debut filled with collaboration, rigor and a connection to the visual art community.
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Seasons in our World, Peter and the Wolf – Cheltenham
★★★✰✰ Bintley feels strongly about tradition (much more so than most other directors) and the commissions are his way of saying what’s important and passing that baton on.
Rambert – PreSentient, Rouge, In Your Rooms – London
★★★✰✰ The bill is a bold statement of intent – but a little underwhelming in reality.
Parsons Dance – Round My World, Eight Women, Runes, Caught, Nascimento – New York
★★★★✰ I can’t recall ever leaving a theater after seeing a Trey McIntyre work, and not feeling better about things.
Viviana Durante Company – THREE/8.38/SEVEN – London
★★✰✰✰ The show at Wilton’s Music Hall, produced and directed by former ballerina Viviana Durante, was originally billed as The Seven Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht…
Yang Liping – Rite of Spring – London
★★★✰✰ As with most retellings, Liping’s centres on a young woman destined to dance herself to death. However, the dancemaker has invoked Buddhist principles, including the concept of reincarnation…
Royal Ballet – Within the Golden Hour, Medusa, Flight Pattern – London
★★★✰✰ A very mixed bill… Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Medusa (★★✰✰✰), Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour (★★★★✰) and Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern (★★★★✰)
Dorrance Dance – ETM: Double Down – San Francisco
★★★★✰ Dorrance Dance have a winning formula – creative innovation, dynamic physical feats, engaging stage presence and feet that move at superhuman speeds.
New York City Ballet – All Balanchine quad bill including Scotch Symphony – New York
★★★★✰ There’s a reason why New York City Ballet doesn’t do George Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony very often. It’s a strangely disjointed ballet…
Kiera Martin – Sadler’s Wells Wild Card series: Where Ye From – London
★★★✰✰ It was one of those evenings without an obvious beginning or end…
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.
San Francisco Ballet – Shostakovich Trilogy – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ The choreography in Shostakovich Trilogy, which was co-commissioned by SFB and ABT and premiered in 2014, is as frustratingly capricious as the music.
English National Ballet – Emerging Dancer Competition 2019 – London
★★★✰✰ The 2019 winner is London-born Julia Conway and her success was well deserved.
New York City Ballet – Hallelujah Junction, Judah, The Exchange, Concerto DSCH – New York
★★★✰✰ The vitality and drive of the troupe was palpable Wednesday night, as was a sense of collective energy to move forward – however rocky that movement might be.
Sisters Grimm – Inala – London
★★★★✰ This third iteration of Inala under the Sadler’s Wells umbrella seems refreshingly new and the abundance of goodwill promised by the Zulu title was all-pervasive.
New York City Ballet – Spring Gala: Bright, Bartók Ballet, Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3 – New York
★★★✰✰ In Bartók Ballet, which coexists but does not comment on the music, the dancers explore a huge range of steps and quotations…
Kalanidhi Dance and Sujata Mohapatra – Dancing the Gods Festival – New York
★★★★✰ We’re lucky in New York to get as much classical Indian dance as we do. Several festivals return year after year, including, in the spring, Dancing the Gods, curated by the dancer and scholar Rajika Puri…
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…
Nora – Nora Invites Deborah Hay: Where Home Is – London
★★★✰✰ Nora’s show combines a piece made by Hay for the company followed by a short lecture-demonstration in which they guide us through different frames for watching dance – inspired from their viewing of Hay making a solo.
