Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome – Sadler’s Wells Wild Card series: Inchoate Buzz – London
★★★✰✰ Fernanda Munoz-Newsome’s unconventional set up in the Lilian Baylis transformed the studio into part nightclub-chill-out lounge, part sensual art installation and featured a line-up of intriguing guest artists.
Gallery – Georgia Vardarou’s Why should it be more desirable for green fire balls to exist than not?
Part of Dance Umbrella 2019 – Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
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.
