Breakin’ Convention: Yaman Okur & Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven – 1mm Au Dessus Du Sol – London
★★★✰✰ Okur’s style of movement is highly distinctive – as if locking and popping have had the jerkiness removed and replaced with something altogether more silky.
New English Ballet Theatre – New Works – London
★★★✰✰ In the event, the levels of polish and invention were quite remarkable given the circumstances.
Images Ballet Company – Interplay, Mirrors, On Lineage, Meadowdown – London
★★★✰✰ Images has done an excellent job of commissioning appropriate, innovative choreographers, allowing the company to exceed their expectations…
Company of Elders – Dare I Speak, Natural 2019 – London
★★★★✰ Over the years that I’ve seen them, this extraordinary company of quirky individuals have become more adventurous about what they perform and flexible in how they perform…
Kiera Martin – Sadler’s Wells Wild Card series: Where Ye From – London
★★★✰✰ It was one of those evenings without an obvious beginning or end…
Nora – Nora Invites Deborah Hay: Where Home Is – London
★★★✰✰ Nora’s show combines a piece made by Hay for the company followed by a short lecture-demonstration in which they guide us through different frames for watching dance – inspired from their viewing of Hay making a solo.
Albert Quesada & Zoltán Vakulya – OneTwoThreeOneTwo – London
★✰✰✰✰ There may have been an intelligent premise to this show but, if there was, it remained inaccessible to me….
Memorable Performances of 2018 – London
Semperoper Ballett Dresden were another new visitor in the summer, with a programme of Forsythe works, some not seen here before. But Forsythe is a theme this year in himself.
Gallery – Aakash Odedra Company in #JeSuis
Photographed at Sadler’s Wells by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
Matthias Sperling – Now That We Know – London
★★✰✰✰ Matthias Sperling’s Now That We Know explores a long-running preoccupation of dancemakers and academics alike: how performance invokes and reflects the mind-body connection.
Alexandra Waierstall – And here we meet – London
★★✰✰✰ Waierstall explores themes of extinction through the impact of humans on the earth’s geology and ecosystems. While thematically and visually intriguing, And here we meet lacks coherence…
Gallery – Akram Khan Company in Portraits in Otherness
Works by Ching-Ying Chien, Maya Jilan Dong, Dickson Mbi, Joy Alpuerto Ritter. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
DeNada Dance Theatre – TORO: Beauty and the Bull – London
★★★★✰ This is a work that is sinister, in mood, and vivid, in style. It works on many levels of ingenious allusion…
Neon Dance – Sadler’s Wells Wild Card bill – London
★★★✰✰ All-in-all, it was a strange and eclectic evening, fluctuating from the sublime to the excruciatingly boring. …It has encouraged me to see more of Neon Dance whenever the chance arises.
Memorable Performances of 2017 – London
Head and shoulders above other new work this year was Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern for the Royal Ballet…
Maud Le Pladec & Okwui Okpokwasili – Hunted – London
★★✰✰✰ Munyaneza rises to the challenge of the show with her provocative, fearless performance, but it’s still difficult to sit through.
Images Ballet Company – Distant Beauties, Concerto for Joyce and Dennis, Handsfree, Scenes of Death and Disaster – London
★★★★✰ This year’s Images Ballet Company is 8 strong, small in the graduate school scheme of things, and yet their show was one of the most exciting I’ve seen in years with a wonderful and eclectic choice of repertoire, danced with passion and verve.
5 Questions to Eleanor Sikorski and Flora Wellesley Wesley of Nora
We talk to two of the three artistic directors of Nora about what makes them tick and touring their latest bill – “Nora invites Aggiss, Burrows, Fargion and Tanguy”.
Agudo Dance Company – Silk Road – London
★★★★✰ There’s an appealing simplicity to Jose Agudo’s first full-length company production.
