Bintley has created a solidly entertaining family work that never bores but never soars to another emotional level, either...
Reviews
Reviews of Dance and Ballet Performances
The highlight of the evening is Claes’ own piece, Is My Whining Winding You Up? Three female friends – portrayed by Claes, Andrea Queens and Natalie Baylie – meet for coffee and to unburden themselves
Val Caniparoli’s Bird’s Nest – the first dance of the evening – is a vivid proof that ballet and jazz are meant for each other
The forklift is a surprisingly versatile prop. The performers hang from its metal prongs, climb along the roof, contort across its lift, and shimmy down the sides to slip behind the wheel. The forklift rarely stops moving.
Clinkard’s ability to draw together an integrated theatrical experience that engages bespoke live music and a clever lighting design shows a sure touch of class.
Some dancers leave us wanting more. That’s how Jenifer Ringer’s retirement from New York City Ballet feels; we’ve seen so little of her in recent seasons, and she’s dancing so well.
The Royal Ballet's latest triple bill has a happy beginning and a sad ending and in the middle there's Wayne McGregor's new piece, Tetractys, an emotionally-neutral blank sheet on which you can write your own feelings - or more likely, your own thoughts.
The cast’s collective maturity serves the work well since the central theme of many of the 50 or so episodes concerns the passage of life; concentrating especially on memories of childhood and youth contrasting with images of old age.
Probe is a genuinely interesting company that has produced delicate, moving and exciting work elsewhere. This piece is sadly none of those things.
It’s nice to change one’s mind about a choreographer once in a while. I’ll come clean: for all their craft and lucidity, I’ve generally found Pam Tanowitz’s dances exceedingly dry, like meticulously-put-together exercises.
The formula for the success of the Mariinsky’s Swan Lake is simple. The love story between a beautiful young woman turned into a swan and a prince is told in a direct, traditional manner. There is no symbolism or hidden meaning here, no exaggeration or melodrama.
Royal Ballet and other Dancers Gala for Ghana London, Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, 2 February 2012 Original programme details www.ashanti-development.org Sunday’s gala evening of music and dance raised money for the charity Ashanti Development, set up at the request of Ghanaians living in London: they asked their friends and neighbours for help to improve the lives of people in their...
The production has been touring since 2006, and will probably welcome near-full houses again on this run. I’m left with an overwhelming sense of an opportunity missed, however...
Acheron, Liam Scarlett's new piece, revealed a choreographer of prodigious imagination and compositional craft, adept at building an atmosphere and suffusing it with traces of meaning.
...the men Ivan Putrov has chosen for his latest Men in Motion programme are exceptional dance-interpreters, not self-glorifiers...
Though Tan dances with a wonderful lightness and an elegance not quite suited to a naïve peasant girl, she never really emotionally engages with the ardent Karapetyan, who possesses nuanced acting and strong technique, and deserves to have a partner who can match his level of commitment to crafting a role.
The Royal Ballet are pushing their cinema relay performances as a way of getting 'out there'- so what's it like to see Osipova and Acosta out in the sticks? Margaret Willis gives her view and talks to others on the experience...
...we get a cleverly staged and very well danced psychodrama, scary both in what we see and what we further imagine. There are, though, two fundamental problems which hold the piece back from complete success.
The company embraces the turn-of-the-20th-century Cecchetti Method, more concerned with anatomic integrity than with razzle-dazzle. Cecchetti’s motto is “purity of line, simplicity of style.” You get the idea.
The best all-round piece of the evening is Hans van Manen’s Variations for Two Couples, from the exquisitely concise choreography by this still-relevant master...