New English Ballet Theatre – The Four Seasons, Remembrance – London
★★★✰✰ Both pieces are demanding and elicit some impressively stylish moments, though there’s a fair amount of unevenness…
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (Trocks) – Les Sylphides bill – London
★★★★✰ The curtain calls for Robert Carter’s “Dying Swan” are nearly as long as the ballet itself and just as funny.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (Trocks) – Programme A, Swan Lake bill – London
★★★★★ The Trocks’ version of Swan Lake (or Lac, as it used to be known) restores some Soviet era removals. Benno, the hero’s best friend and supporter, is back, as are mime sequences, mostly mystifying the participants…
Gilles Brinas’ Che Malambo – London
★★★✰✰ Malambo is a dance form rooted in the traditions of the gaucho (South American cowboys), evolving from long nights by the campfire on the cattle trails of Las Pampas…
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.
Motionhouse – Charge – London
★★✰✰✰ The theme of Charge was energy – how electricity shapes our world and powers our bodies and minds; it was created with the input of scientists at the University of Oxford.
Germán Cornejo – Tango After Dark – London
★★★★★ I cannot imagine that partnered dance gets any better than this.
Jakop Ahlbom Company – Lebensraum – London
★★★★✰ There are some extremely demanding physical comedy routines incorporated into Lebensraum. Even some of the throwaways are wince-inducing…
Mark Murphy’s V-TOL – Out of this World – London
★✰✰✰✰ It wants to be a seat-of-your-pants psychological chiller and a heartbreaking love story. It is neither.
Motionhouse – Scattered – London
★★★★✰ Weaker choreography might easily be overshadowed by the monumental capacity of the set and motion graphics, but Finnan’s work is equally imposing…
Gallery – Circus of the Senses in Mother Africa: Khayelitsha – My Home
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
5 Questions to Noluyanda Mqulwana, dancer and choreographer with Mother Africa
Tanzania-based Circus of the Senses are presenting their internationally-toured Mother Africa at London’s Peacock in February/March. We have a word with dancer and choreographer Noluyanda Mqulwana (Nolly)…
New English Ballet Theatre – Quint-Essential bill of Five New Ballets – London
★★★✰✰ Some of these pieces are more successful than others but the dancers seize the opportunities with relish…
Gallery – New English Ballet Theatre in Land of Nod, Strangers, Moonshine and Enticement’s Lure
Gallery by Dave Morgan…
China National Peking Opera Company – Legend of the White Snake & The General & The Prime Minister – London
★★★★★ …put together, over two very different performances – one highly comedic, the other, much more serious – all of this imagery, profound drama, great singing, hilarious comedy and so much more, is easily enough to justify my very first five star-rating of 2016.
Motionhouse – Broken – London
★★★✰✰ If the tech didn’t entirely wow and draw me in then the Motionhouse dancers did as strong and agile performers. This is dance infused with circus and their clever physicality pleases no end.
