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.
Rosie Kay Dance Company – Rosie Kay’s Fantasia – Birmingham
★★★★✰ A bravo to Rosie Kay, who does it yet again, delivering thought provoking dance in a very smartly designed package. (but do read the programme!)
Fame the Musical – London
★★★★✰ With a strong and familiar story, an excellent songbook, well performed, and a pacy theatrical momentum, it is highly recommended.
New York City Ballet – Fall Fashion Gala with The Shaded Line, Lineage, Symphony in C – New York
★★★✰✰ Kudos to Lovette for really going out on a limb… The Shaded Line feels truly her own, and it’s clear that she has much to say about her chosen profession…
English National Ballet – Akram Khan’s Giselle – London
★★★★★ Everything about this production is topical, very real and will probably be so for many years to come. Absolutely five stars to the company…
New York City Ballet – Balanchine + Wheeldon bill & Jewels – New York
★★★★✰ It makes a noticeable difference when Litton, music director of the company, is in the pit; the orchestra has presence and sings, providing a convincing counterpart for the dancing.
Mark Morris Dance Group – Mozart Dances – San Francisco
★★★★✰ Mozart Dances goes far beyond a basic choreographic rendering of the score, instead inviting an active dialogue between disciplines.
Astana Ballet – Love Fear Loss, A Fuego Lento, Heritage of the Great Steppe, Salomé – London
★★★✰✰ The extremely good-looking company members are well-trained, versatile dancers…
Margaret Jenkins Dance Company – Trace Figures – San Francisco
★★★★✰ Friday the 13th was auspicious for San Francisco dance: Margaret Jenkins Dance Company premiered Trace Figures, a site-specific performance immersion that could be done by no other company or permutation of artists.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater – Programme C: Ounce of Faith, Members Don’t Get Weary, Ella, Revelations – London
★★★★✰ Having watched the company since childhood, I find it is impossible not to instantly appreciate the sheer beauty and energy they radiate…
New English Ballet Theatre – New Works – London
★★★✰✰ In the event, the levels of polish and invention were quite remarkable given the circumstances.
RB, ABT, NYCB & NYTB dancers at the Joyce Ballet Festival – Prog C, curated by Jean-Marc Puissant – New York
★★★★✰ Starwise, Bejart’s Wayfarer bumps this program from two stars to four.
Dane Hurst and Tom Rowland – Falling Man – London
★★★★✰ Falling Man is a huge achievement, performed with intensity and charisma, and we really need to see it again in our theatres.
FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival including works by Davis/Mullis, Dazaun Soleyn and Maurya Kerr – San Francisco
★★★★✰ SF choreographers Maurya Kerr, Dazaun Soleyn and Slender-White, and the visiting duo of Joy Davis (Boston) and Eric Mullis (Charlotte, North Carolina), presented new works of 10–20 minutes in length.
RB, NBoC & ABT dancers at the Joyce Ballet Festival – Prog B, curated by Lauren Cuthbertson – New York
★★✰✰✰ I hadn’t seen much of the well-regarded Cuthbertson, so I was looking forward to this chance to get to know her (she appeared in four of five pieces), as well as the not-always-dubious introduction to new works by new choreographers…
Garrett + Moulton Productions – Four Acts of Light & Wonder bill – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ …the most apt descriptor for the entire program was joyful.
Bolshoi Ballet – Don Quixote – London
★★★★✰ The reason the Bolshoi’s Don Quixote is so enjoyable is the gusto with which it is performed. It doesn’t aim to be remotely authentically Spanish or even respectful of the original 1869 version…
Scottish Ballet – The Crucible – Edinburgh
★★★★★ Scottish Ballet has a major critical hit on their hands – this is compelling 21st century watching. It was the premiere you want to see, but so very often don’t, with everybody, but everybody, at the top of their game…
New Adventures – Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet – London
★★★✰✰ Our setting is the Verona Institute in the near future. Here disturbed young people have been locked up for an opaque purpose under the eye of a sadistic jailer… A traumatised Juliet meets a troubled Romeo, and it ends as badly as you might expect.
Royal Ballet dancers at the Joyce Ballet Festival – Program A, An Evening of Solos and Duets – New York
★★★✰✰ Program A consisted of a string of solos and duets representing a slice of the company’s choreographic trajectory, from Frederick Ashton through Kenneth MacMillan to Liam Scarlett, Wayne McGregor, and Charlotte Edmonds.
