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.
