Kate Prince and Sting – Message in a Bottle – London
★★★✰✰ The idea of setting a story about a refugee family to the songs of Sting was inevitably an enforced marriage of his diverse lyrics with a narrative for which they were never intended.
Acosta Danza – Up Close bill – London
★★★✰✰ This was indeed a case of Up Close and personal with five intimate pieces variously dosed with Cuban fire and flair…
ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company – Some Like It Hip Hop – London
★★★★✰ Some Like it Hip Hop is full of quirky humour, great music and dance, enjoying top-notch performances throughout the whole cast of sixteen.
Dance Proms 2016 – Royal Albert Hall, London
★★★★✰ …the event is less about showing off the talents of dancers and their teachers than celebrating their hard work and dedication.
Youth America Grand Prix – Gala 2016 – New York
★★✰✰✰ Like all galas, this was quite a mixed bag. Over 200 students trooped on and offstage in a veritable tornado of activity before the veteran YAGP dancers stepped out for the showstopping stuff…
RAW Dance Company – Untapped! – New York
★★★✰✰ “Untapped! is a cheap and cheerful, mildly rowdy show which puts a spring in one’s step.”
Twyla Tharp – 50th Anniversary Tour: First Fanfare, Preludes and Fugues, Second Fanfare, Yowzie – New York
…one can’t help but admire the torrent of ideas bouncing around Tharp’s brain…
FLASH MOB – London
Including a low-key pilot at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe of 2012, the ‘Flash Mob’ brand is now into its third iteration, and I must immediately confess to liking this show less than either of its predecessors.
Blaze – London
It would appear that Blaze is to hip hop as Burn the Floor has been to the popularity of ballroom and Latin…
Susan Marshall & Company – Play/Pause – New York
The gulf between commercial dance – the kind one sees in TV ads, music videos, and on shows like So You Think You Can Dance – and theatrical dance is disconcerting….
