James Wilton Dance – The Storm – London
★★★✰✰ The Storm grapples with feeling low, becoming depressed and the tempest like outbursts which can follow.
Royal Ballet – The Unknown Soldier (premiere), Infra, Symphony in C – London
★★★✰✰ If The Unknown Soldier is dispiritingly low-key, Wayne McGregor’s Infra remains assertively bold…
La Scala Ballet – Giselle and Don Quixote – Brisbane
★★★★✰ Nicoletta Manni’s performances in Don Quixote and Giselle on the last three days of Teatro alla Scala ballet company’s season in Australia was extraordinary, not just for her stamina and resilience, but her acting skills.
Mark Morris Dance Group / Silkroad Ensemble – Layla and Majnun – London
★★★✰✰ Mark Morris’s Layla and Majnun is a music concert with dancing, lamenting a love that cannot be. It’s an age-old story, spread across continents and centuries.
Rambert2 + Rambert – Grey Matter, E2 7SD, Killer Pig, Ghost Dances – London
★★★★✰ Rambert’s latest programme is a night of hellos and goodbyes, marking the debut of the company’s new standalone junior faction, Rambert2, as well the final performance of a repertory favourite, Christopher Bruce’s Ghost Dances.
Aura Fischbeck Dance – DUSK – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ DUSK had a lot going for it. First was the overall concept. DUSK challenges the viewer to not only acknowledge the idea of transformation, but to consider what lies beneath.
Rosie Kay Dance Company – MK Ultra – London
★★★✰✰ Rosie Kay’s MK Ultra is an ambitious project which tackles complex thematic sources – conspiracy theories, brain washing and mind-control, not to mention myths about secret societies such as the Illuminati…
Staatsballett Berlin – La Bayadère (premiere of Ratmansky reconstruction) – Berlin
★★★★✰ In the last several years, the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky has developed a sideline to his main choreographic efforts: the reviving of ballets by Marius Petipa in a way that represents the original choreography with as much fidelity as possible…
Andrea Costanzo Martini and Aris Papadopoulos / Martha Pasakopoulou – Aerowaves 2bill – London
★★★✰✰ After all these years, here is evidence – if any were needed – that the Aerowaves experiment continues to showcase great talent.
Shobana Jeyasingh Dance – Contagion – London
★★★★✰ Overshadowed by the atrocities of WWI, which is commemorated loudly and frequently, the killer Spanish Flu, which killed an estimated 50-100 million people, is at last fittingly acknowledged on its 100th anniversary in Shobana Jeyasingh’s work Contagion.
Royal Ballet – La Bayadère – London
★★★★✰ In the past, the Royal Ballet’s version, last performed five years ago, has sometimes seemed insubstantial. Not so this time, with a luxury cast in full dramatic mode: Vadim Muntagirov, Marianela Nuñez, Natalia Osipova and Gary Avis…
Matthias Sperling – Now That We Know – London
★★✰✰✰ Matthias Sperling’s Now That We Know explores a long-running preoccupation of dancemakers and academics alike: how performance invokes and reflects the mind-body connection.
Birmingham Royal Ballet – Fire and Fury: The King Dances, Ignite – London
★★★✰✰ David Bintley, who steps down as director of Birmingham Royal Ballet at the end of the 2018/2019 season, describes the current double bill as ‘two ballets fuelled by power and politics’.
City Center Balanchine Festival – Miami City Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet
★★★✰✰ It’s fascinating to see how Balanchinean charm and wit are interpreted by dancers for whom the Balanchine repertoire is more of a foreign language.
Royal Ballet – Mayerling (Bonelli, Morera) – London
★★★★✰ The partnership in Mayerling between Morera and Bonelli is a fine example of how experience can illumine the nuances of a dramatic ballet.
English National Ballet – Manon – Milton Keynes Theatre
★★★★✰ English National Ballet can once more reflect triumphally on another significant success.
Jerome Robbins / Luca Veggetti – Watermill – New York
★★★✰✰ I was happy to discover that, yes, in fact, something about this more intimate, immersive setting did alter the work’s energy and rhythm, its overall feel.
Jasmin Vardimon Company – Medusa – London
★★★✰✰ Jasmin Vardimon’s latest work uses mythology to make a powerful point about gender issues in the present day with an overt relevance to the #MeToo movement.
Colin Dunne – Concert – London
★★★★✰ Since leaving the Riverdance juggernaut, Dunne has taken a stripped-back approach to Irish dancing, exposing its deeply soulful side.
Le Patin Libre – Threshold – London
★★★★✰ If there is a major difference between Le Patin Libre of 2014 and now, then surely it lies in this merger of these skaters’ extreme skills with the same elite capability in their artistic collaborators.
