Dutch National Ballet – 8 new digital works streamed to the world during lockdown
Dutch National Ballet, under director Ted Brandsen, have made a splendid response to COVID-19, streaming 8 new digital dances in the last 3 months. Graham Watts on many interesting and absorbing works, varying from ★★✰✰✰ to ★★★★★
Mark Bruce Company – Return to Heaven – London
★★★✰✰ Trying to understand a holistic approach to the narrative was like compiling a jigsaw where some of the pieces are missing and others don’t fit.
Paul Taylor American Modern Dance – Gala including new Kyle Abraham – New York
★★★★✰ As a special one-off, Michael Trusnovec, now a guest artist, danced the solo from George Balanchine’s spiky and ascetic Episodes which he made for Paul Taylor in 1959.
Tom Dale Company – Step Sonic, Resonance of Air, Escape, Surge – London
Tom Dale Company Step Sonic, Resonance of Air, Escape, Surge ★★★✰✰ London, The Place 14 November 2019 tomdale.org.uk www.theplace.org.uk This two-part programme of work in progress further enhances Tom Dale’s reputation as a…
5 Questions to Meaghan Grace Hinkis, Royal Ballet Soloist
Meaghan Grace Hinkis, the Royal Ballet soloist, is about to make her debut as Vera in Frederick Ashton’s “A Month in the Country”. 5 quick questions about that and her dancing life…
San Francisco Ballet – Die Toteninsel (premiere), Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes, Björk Ballet – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Liam Scarlett has great taste in dancers. For the 29 March world premiere of Die Toteninsel, his fourth commission for San Francisco Ballet, the British choreographer chose the lyrical and athletic principal Joseph Walsh and soloist Lauren Strongin…
Royal Ballet – Frankenstein – London
★★✰✰✰ Could Liam Scarlett’s monstrous Frankenstein be fixed with more, better surgery? Evidently not, in this revival, three years after its creation.
Royal Danish Ballet – The Queen of Spades – Copenhagen
★★★✰✰ The good news is that Queen of Spades is a good-looking crowd pleaser and the RDB dancers look fantastic in it – I can’t emphasise that enough. Also good that it’s a step up from his last commission, Frankenstein – thank goodness, really.
Kevin Finnan, Motionhouse artistic director, on creating their latest work – Charge
“I wanted to make a show about energy and I wanted to tell it through the human body…”
Royal Ballet – Symphonic Dances (premiere), The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, Tarantella, Strapless – London
★★★★✰ Symphonic Dances is Scarlett’s farewell portrait of Yanowsky. Like her, the ballet is big and bold, beautiful and elusive.
Royal Ballet – Mayerling – London
★★★★★ Edward Watson and Steven McRae casts both reviewed. “…the Royal Ballet is doing MacMillan proud, coming up to the 25th anniversary of his death…”
San Francisco Ballet – Frankenstein – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ It was a dark and stormy night – San Francisco Ballet couldn’t have designed a more apt and ominous atmosphere for the opening of Liam Scarlett’s Frankenstein.
Memorable Performances of 2016 – London
Lynette Halewood with her personal selection of London dance memories from the past year…
The McOnie Company – Jekyll and Hyde – London
★★★✰✰ Drew McOnie’s aim in his dance-theatre version of Jekyll and Hyde is to tell a ripping yarn without the use of words. He’s very much a Matthew Bourne disciple…
Royal Ballet – Frankenstein – London
★★★✰✰ Liam Scarlett treats Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic horror novel, Frankenstein, as essentially a domestic drama.
Interview – Laura Morera – Principal, The Royal Ballet
“I’ve never won a prize before…” on the day Laura Morera won an Outstanding award at the National Dance Awards, Margaret Willis had a long chat with the excited, and much loved, Royal Ballet principal…
San Francisco Ballet – 2016 Season Announced
Hot off the presses, San Francisco Ballet 2016 season announcement includes two world premieres, three full-length revivals and numerous bold-face names, including Forsythe, Ratmansky and Wheeldon…
Matthew Bourne / New Adventures – Edward Scissorhands – London
Though it has a downbeat ending, Bourne raises audiences’ spirits with cheerily choreographed curtain calls, a heavenly chorale and drifting snowflakes.
