★★★★✰ Indigo is one of those dances that doesn’t seem totally abstract, yet doesn’t follow a linear path either. It’s more about concept and emotions. Layers and extremes. Just like the colour indigo itself.
Tag - Vivaldi
★★★✰✰ The works offer strong contrasts between the traditional story-telling strength of Northern Ballet and more abstract thematic dance.
★★★★✰ A bravo to Rosie Kay, who does it yet again, delivering thought provoking dance in a very smartly designed package. (but do read the programme!)
★★★✰✰ Light on tap and heavy on concept, the show is inspired by an imaginary conversation between Glover and Gregg Burge – a multi-talented artist lost too young (23 years ago this 4 July) to brain cancer.
★★★★✰ By swelling the numbers of her small touring company, Yolande Yorke-Edgell was able to mount a revival of Kenneth MacMillan's Playground and a 10-strong ensemble for Robert Cohan's Communion. The programme also included new works by Sophia Stoller and Yorke-Edgell herself.
★★★✰✰ A very mixed bill... Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Medusa (★★✰✰✰), Christopher Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour (★★★★✰) and Crystal Pite's Flight Pattern (★★★★✰)
★★★★✰ Austin McCormick’s Company XIV continues to maintain the highest bar in balletic, baroque burlesque.
★★★✰✰ Both pieces are demanding and elicit some impressively stylish moments, though there’s a fair amount of unevenness...
★★★★✰ A good night of new work for Leeds coupling a rising star from outside with local and much-loved company talent.
We talk to Jenna Lee about her work - The Four Seasons - for New English Ballet Theatre's autumn tour this September and October. That and about her wider choreographic practice...
★★★✰✰ Bouder's pick-up ensemble of eight, which she refers to as an arts collaborative, reflects her ideals. It is racially diverse; the choreographers include both men and women. Not all the choreographers are white. This should be par for the course, but it’s not.
★★★★✰ Crystal Pite’s work stands out as the crowd-pleaser. With huge cheers and applause, we rise to our feet for the dancers.
★★★✰✰ I’ve seen The Christmas Ballet five times over the years and it has always been and continues to be a lovely, celebratory afternoon or evening at the theatre. That said, I still struggle with the format.
★★★✰✰ Pavement, from 2012, takes as its touchstone the 1991 film Boyz n the Hood, John Singleton’s hard-hitting coming-of-age drama...
★★★★★ Alexei Ratmansky’s Odessa left me breathless. The dancing (I saw both casts) was phenomenal on all levels: assured, expressive, and thoroughly dramatic.
★★★★✰ ...I was again struck by just how effortlessly a story can be communicated and emotions laid bare by ballet - it was a triumph.
★★★✰✰ With his latest, The Decalogue, which opened on May 12, Justin Peck seems to have turned a new page...
★★★★✰ Bausch with added balls.
★★★★✰ This year’s White Light Festival, at Lincoln Center, has spawned a mini-festival of its own, Sounds of India, curated by the modern-dance choreographer Mark Morris. Why Morris? Because he has been going to India since the eighties...
★★★✰✰ Yorke Dance Project is unusual, among small modern dance companies, in its respect for musicality and for the demands it makes for skilled partnering.