★★★★✰ The audience laughs, the company looks great, the orchestra... sounds full and vibrant, and you leave the theatre with a rare feeling of joy. Lightness of spirit and complexity of execution in one delightful package.
Reviews
Reviews of Dance and Ballet Performances
★★★★✰ It’s been a very enjoyable homage to Robbins’s versatility...
★★★✰✰ Bouder's pick-up ensemble of eight, which she refers to as an arts collaborative, reflects her ideals. It is racially diverse; the choreographers include both men and women. Not all the choreographers are white. This should be par for the course, but it’s not.
★★★★✰ The programme, performed by two very different American ballet companies, displayed Robbins’s versatility while revealing the similarities in his approach to music.
★★★✰✰ Whether walking through space, cycling through a gestural sequence or dancing a technically demanding phrase the dancers were a real joy to watch. The choreography on the other hand, was more of a mixed bag.
★★★★✰ World-class dancers... it's the dancers' polish and power that raises all they do up another level.
★★★★✰ Devon Teuscher has done her time, and the results are breathtaking...
★★★✰✰ Semperoper's dancers distort the classical ballet line more than the Paris Opera Ballet's (or ENB's) and don't bother much with fifth positions or precise épaulement for Forsythe's endless tendus. They seem contemporary dancers rather than étoiles being outrageous.
★★★✰✰ As Woyzeck productions go this was rather different featuring just two professional actors, supported by a community company of over 80 who supplied the other named roles but for the most part super-colourful reality and dancing. For me, it's their show and the big reason to see the staging.
★★✰✰✰ Waierstall explores themes of extinction through the impact of humans on the earth’s geology and ecosystems. While thematically and visually intriguing, And here we meet lacks coherence...
★★★★✰ Rhiannon Faith’s hard-hitting show coats the horrors of domestic violence in the saccharine sweetness of a girly party.
★★★★✰ Crystal Pite’s work stands out as the crowd-pleaser. With huge cheers and applause, we rise to our feet for the dancers.
★★★✰✰ Williamson’s commission – the first of an ambitious Ballet Now programme for new works – was themed on issues of gender and alienation, with Brandon Lawrence being a man struggling for identity...
★★★✰✰ But, at least to my eye, the production’s triumph is its final lakeside act. There, the formations of swans, as originally choreographed by Lev Ivanov, become intricate, delicate, lyrical, and intensely moving.
★★★★✰ McGregor’s company dancers (in Bach Forms) brought a surging energy, buoying up jewel-like moments from the Royal Ballet stars...
★★★★✰ It was a fine team performance from the company but particular honours go to Momoko Hirata’s Juliet who let us know what she was thinking and feeling at every moment.
★★★✰✰ Curated by dance artist Amy Bell, Splayed seeks to mess up stereotypical, heterosexual representations of the female body and replace them with other dynamic alternatives.
★★★★✰ This show defied the norm: a counter-intuitive observation about a spin-off from the archetypal routine of a Saturday evening institution that millions of us watch with our feet up.
★★★★✰ SFDanceworks is going places. Formed in 2014 by longtime San Francisco Ballet soloist James Sofranko, the relatively new company already finds itself in a season of expansion.
★★★★✰ It's a better Sleeping Beauty than the Royal Ballet's, but it benefits enormously from a stellar performance at its heart, a reminder of how civilised ballet can be.