Paris Opera Ballet – Thierrée / Shechter / Pérez / Pite – Paris
★★★★✰ Crystal Pite’s work stands out as the crowd-pleaser. With huge cheers and applause, we rise to our feet for the dancers.
Ekaterina Maximova Arabesque Ballet Competition Gala in Honour of Marius Petipa and Lev Tolstoy – Perm
The occasion was the 15th anniversary of the Ekaterina Maximova Arabesque Ballet Competition named, since 2012, after the late and much-loved Bolshoi ballerina, and organised by her husband, Vladimir Vasiliev…
Phoenix Dance Theatre – Windrush: Movement of the People, Calyx, Shadow – London
★★★★✰ Watson, a child of the Windrush generation, showed movingly here just what a “hostile environment” existed for these migrants from the moment they arrived.
Royal Ballet / Charlotte Edmonds – Piggy in the Middle, Sink or Swim – London
★★★✰✰ Piggy in the Middle is, in part, Edmonds’ tribute to Kenneth MacMillan, the 25th anniversary of whose death has been marked during the Royal Ballet’s 2017/2018 season.
Dutch National Ballet – Dutch Doubles: Impermanence, Two and Only, Déjà vu, Last Resistance – Amsterdam
★★★★✰ Dutch National Ballet’s Dutch Doubles quad bill features 3 new works by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Ernst Meisner and Wubkje Kuindersma plus a classic piece, new to the company, from the legend that is Hans van Manen.
Russian Ballet Icons Gala 2018 – London
★★★✰✰ This year’s Russian Ballet gala was ostensibly in honour of the 200th anniversary of Marius Petipa’s birth. Any choreography attributed to him was mostly a long way ‘after Petipa’, but it’s always fun to see excellent Russian dancers deliver pas de deux from Don Quixote, Swan Lake and Le Corsaire.
5 Questions to Mark Bruce about his latest dance-theatre work – Macbeth
As his new Macbeth starts its UK tour with Jonathan Goddard in the lead, we have a very quick chat with award winning choreographer Mark Bruce…
Saburo Teshigawara / KARAS – Sleeping Water – New York
★★✰✰✰ There are dances that one figures out in the first five minutes. Hope as one might that the piece will evolve or turn a corner, it soldiers on in the same vein, section after section, until the end.
Ballet Central – 2017 Tour – London
★★★✰✰ At the end of the evening was what you might call the blockbuster piece of the tour – 30 minutes of Matthew Bourne in the form of Act II of his “Highland Fling”. Bourne’s take on “La Sylphide” is a wonderful piece of work, full of wit, style and pathos…
New York City Ballet – Spring Gala with Odessa, Ratmansky premiere – New York
★★★✰✰ With only four works, no intermissions and a run time of less than two hours, New York City Ballet’s Spring Gala was short and to the point.
New York City Ballet – HERE/NOW Festival, Wheeldon Quad bill – New York
★★★✰✰ It’s a shame that the company didn’t choose to revive some Wheeldon rarities from its back catalogue…
Complexions Contemporary Ballet – Gutter Glitter, So Not A…, Star Dust – New York
★★✰✰✰ Slated as a “rock opera style production” created in the late David Bowie’s honour, Star Dust is a lengthy, razzle dazzle suite of dances set to Bowie’s most popular tunes.
Ave Maya Gala in Memory of Maya Plisetskaya – London
★★★✰✰ Every gala needs a revelation, and this one was provided by Sergio Bernal, a Spanish dancer who dominated the stage in an imperious farruca solo from Antonio’s flamenco version of The Three Cornered Hat…
New York City Ballet – Works By Balanchine, Martins, Peck and Wheeldon – Washington
★★★✰✰ The first of two mixed programs that New York City Ballet presented at the Kennedy Center Opera House in March offered a wide variety of works…
Royal Ballet – Wheeldon bill: Strapless, After the Rain, Within the Golden Hour – London
★★★✰✰ Wheeldon’s talents are on display, as well as the Royal Ballet’s dancers. A pity, then, that Strapless has been exposed without previews to sort out its weaknesses.
Dance Heginbotham – Angel’s Share, Diamond, Easy Win – New York
Heginbotham has a knack for choosing just the right music for his dances, none of it hackneyed or used solely for its atmospheric qualities: no Arvo Pärt, no Philip Glass…
Royal Ballet – Raven Girl, Connectome – London
In this revival of Wayne McGregor’s Raven Girl, Watson becomes something more than a postman…
Chamber Dance Project – Joyce Theater Ballet Festival bill – New York
Chamber Dance Project is essentially what it says on the tin: a small dance troupe which performs to live chamber music.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater – Exodus bill – New York
Harris’s Exodus, on the other hand, felt just right. Like so many pieces in the Ailey repertory, it suggests a spiritual quest, a journey toward the light…
Alvin Ailey – Odetta, Uprising, Night Creature, Awassa Astrige/Ostrich, Bad Blood, After the Rain pas de deux, Revelations – Boston
The second night… this was by far the best program I’ve ever seen Ailey offer: five pieces, each as good as the others in its different way…
