David Gordon has been collaging past choreography and present variations, text and narration, video and photographs and graphic arts, personal and cultural history for so long that it is no surprise he was perfectly positioned to make something truly involving under lock down...
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★★★★✰ As tentative steps continue to get the dance world back on its feet, the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield has asked three companies to embrace the possibilities of lockdown with a trio of filmed works.
David McAllister, about to step down as the artistic director of Australian Ballet, has just released his memoir and it proves enlightening and candid reading about both the company and the man himself...
★★★★✰ Despite Covid-19 English National Ballet still ran their unique Emerging Dancer Competition and streamed the night in full to fans. The 2020 winner is Ivana Bueno - "Very evidently a talent to watch", says Jann Parry.
English National Ballet’s Emerging Dancer Competition is unique in British ballet in throwing the spotlight on more junior dancers or "the excellence of the Company’s young talent,” as ENB put it. This year’s competition is live-streamed from ENB's London studios on 22 September and ahead of the that we talk to the finalists – Ivana Bueno, Carolyne Galvao, Miguel Angel Maidana, Victor Prigent...
★★★★✰ Ice Cycle is an unusually beautiful vision suggesting, at times, the effects of global warming, encompassing Sperling’s environmental concerns as well as her choreographic and design mastery.
As lockdown eases ballet is getting out of streaming from living rooms and into the big wide world - Jann Parry looks at six happenings/films involving dancers from Dance Theatre of Harlem, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Alonzo King LINES Ballet & The Royal Ballet
★★★★✰ 21 dance films, sourced from all over the globe and presented by Marquee TV in association with Screen.dance (Scotland’s Festival of dance on screen) and San Francisco Dance Film Festival.
★★★★✰ Rather than succumb to a COVID-19 hiatus, RAWdance pivoted to a dance-on-camera format for the CONCEPT Series’ 28th edition, and presented seven new short films created by various artists over the past few months...
Royal Danish Ballet's Tobias Praetorius is an anomaly, a young dancer – he’s only 24 – who is already interested in playing character roles. He is also a choreographer and Marina Harss catches up with him about his latest project - a 'Pixiballet' (aimed at children) based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Princess and the Pea...
★★★✰✰ Although An Evening with Scottish Ballet could have been better presented by the Edinburgh Festival, the programme showcases an enterprising company full of ideas...
Alexei Ratmansky, the Covid-19 Interview - “Its’ like a dress rehearsal for retirement and it turns out that I’m not ready for it.”
★★★★✰ The Kaatsbaan Summer Festival offers the respite of communication without words, of the beauty of the body moving freely through space, and of shared experience.
★★✰✰✰ Strasbourg 1518 has been lauded as 'head buttingly confrontational' and an original 'dance for today'. It isn't. Familiar Bausch tropes don't really reflect 1518's psychogenic mania, which was communal, or today's experience of isolation, stress and tedium.
★★★★✰ One silver lining to the pandemic has been getting to see companies online that I have been largely unfamiliar with and Ballet Hispanico is a real find...
New York City Center is streaming some ballet master classes, curated and hosted by Alastair Macaulay, and involving Misty Copeland, Sara Mearns and Tiler Peck. The coaches/guests include Nina Ananiashvili, Merrill Ashley, Alessandra Ferri, Stephanie Saland and Pam Tanowitz.
★★★★✰ / ★★★★★ If there have been better examples of substantial dance films made during these trying times then I have yet to see them.
★★★★★ Choreographers (Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Didy Veldman, Andrew McNicol) and performers are providing us with amazing records of what they can achieve in the strangest of times.
★★★★✰ Rooms2020 retains Sokolow’s intensely expressive choreography, which makes it a striking documentation of the aloneness and alienation that can pervade this time of pandemic.
★★★✰✰ Wheeldon has woven a lot of narrative threads into his ballet spectacular.