★★★★✰ NDCW comprises a rich mix of performers, collectively hailing from six countries (although, surprisingly, none appear to have any Welsh heritage). What is even more surprising is that all bar one have joined in the past nine months...
Reviews
Reviews of Dance and Ballet Performances
★★★★✰ Formosa means beautiful, and is how Portuguese sailors described the island of Taiwan when they reached it in the sixteenth century. It is the title of the latest work by Lin Hwai-Min, his final creation before retiring as Artistic Director of the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre...
★★★✰✰ One of Robbins’ great talents was sniffing out the style of his time, but this inevitably places a date stamp on his work.
★★★★✰ Jonzi D’s hip-hop dance festival reached its 15th birthday this year and its quinceañero was – eventually – a raucously joyful coming-of-age. Featuring performances by BirdGang, Zeljko Bozic & Miljan Nojic, Elsabet Yonas, UMA, Room 2 Manoeuvre, Compagnie Amala Dianor, The Locksmiths, The Ruggeds, Mufasa & Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Boy Blue Entertainment.
★★★✰✰ For 20 years Harlem Stage has presented emerging and established choreographers in its E-Moves series, and 2018’s installment featured a diverse cross-section of styles and influences.
★★★★✰ Brew describes physically integrated dance as “dancers of different physicalities uniting together as equals, colleagues and collaborators to create high-caliber art that is relevant and reflective of the world we live in." And each offering on the program embodied that spirit and sentiment.
★★✰✰✰ Last week, on Thursday night, with the exception of The Four Temperaments, the company’s thoughts appeared to be elsewhere...
★★★★★ What Scottish Ballet wanted to do was take the full experience out to the Highlands and Islands. So the good folks in Lerwick (capital of the Shetland Isles, population 7,500) saw was the same show they got in Edinburgh and Glasgow...
★★★★✰ Watson, a child of the Windrush generation, showed movingly here just what a “hostile environment” existed for these migrants from the moment they arrived.
★★★★✰ This is a work that is sinister, in mood, and vivid, in style. It works on many levels of ingenious allusion...
★★★✰✰ Although I haven’t seen Parsons’ work before, I can see very quickly why it’s riveting.
★★★★✰ The Merry Widow is Robert Helpmann’s great gift to the Australian Ballet. It premiered in November 1975 and has been staged more than 400 times since.
★★★★★ A hundred monkeys might eventually type out Hamlet, but only a herd of unicorns on Ecstasy could come anywhere near Arthur Pita’s Björk Ballet.
★★★★✰ It’s one of the most striking characteristics of the Mark Morris Dance Group. A common sense of focus, an alertness to the music and to each other.
James Finnemore: TERRA Alleyne Dance: A Night’s Game ★★★✰✰ London, The Place 24 April 2018 www.jamesfinnemore.co.uk www.alleynedance.com For some reason, the intended (or, at least, promoted) order of this double bill was reversed and that was a pity. Alleyne Dance’s offering appeared to have the more complicated technical set-up, with a range of floor-based lighting alongside the front row of...
★★★★✰ Program C’s offerings spanned the choreographic spectrum, from pure movement to narrative threads to inventive theatricality. Every work on the bill impressed with its freshness and ingenuity.
★★★✰✰ The inspiration for bharatanatyam dancer Malavika Sarukkai to create her group work Thari – The Loom came from the hand weavers of Kanchipuram in India and the elaborately patterned saris that they produce.
★★✰✰✰ Jamaican dancehall and traditional Georgian vocal polyphony are not two things you expect to see in the same sentence, let alone on the same stage.
★★★★✰ Hair is a fraught subject for most women. For black women, the struggle with their locks (braids, weaves, relaxed or natural) can be titanic – getting your hair done can be a day-long ordeal...
★★★★✰ An hour in the company of Nikki and JD is well spent.