Northern Ballet – The Kingdom of Back, Mamela…, The Shape of Sound – London
★★★✰✰ The works offer strong contrasts between the traditional story-telling strength of Northern Ballet and more abstract thematic dance.
Rosie Kay Dance Company – Rosie Kay’s Fantasia – Birmingham
★★★★✰ 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!)
Savion Glover – Lady5 @ Savion Glover’s BaRoQUe’BLaK TaP CaFe – New York
★★★✰✰ 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.
Yorke Dance Project – Twenty: Playground, Between and Within, Communion, Imprint – London
★★★★✰ 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.
Royal Ballet – Within the Golden Hour, Medusa, Flight Pattern – London
★★★✰✰ A very mixed bill… Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Medusa (★★✰✰✰), Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour (★★★★✰) and Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern (★★★★✰)
Company XIV – Nutcracker Rouge – New York
★★★★✰ Austin McCormick’s Company XIV continues to maintain the highest bar in balletic, baroque burlesque.
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…
Northern Ballet – The Kingdom of Back, Mamela…, The Shape of Sound – Leeds
★★★★✰ A good night of new work for Leeds coupling a rising star from outside with local and much-loved company talent.
5 Questions to Jenna Lee, freelance choreographer, on her creative world and working with New English Ballet Theatre…
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…
Ashley Bouder Project – Red Spotted Purple, Duet, Alas, Symbiotic Twin, In Pursuit Of – New York
★★★✰✰ 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.
Paris Opera Ballet – Thierrée / Shechter / Pérez / Pite – Paris
★★★★✰ Crystal Pite’s work stands out as the crowd-pleaser. With huge cheers and applause, we rise to our feet for the dancers.
Smuin Contemporary American Ballet – The Christmas Ballet – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ 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.
Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion – Pavement – London
★★★✰✰ Pavement, from 2012, takes as its touchstone the 1991 film Boyz n the Hood, John Singleton’s hard-hitting coming-of-age drama…
New York City Ballet – Square Dance, Tarantella, Odessa, Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes – Washington
★★★★★ Alexei Ratmansky’s Odessa left me breathless. The dancing (I saw both casts) was phenomenal on all levels: assured, expressive, and thoroughly dramatic.
Royal Danish Ballet – Dangerous Liaisons (premiere) – Copenhagen
★★★★✰ …I was again struck by just how effortlessly a story can be communicated and emotions laid bare by ballet – it was a triumph.
New York City Ballet – HERE/NOW Festival No. 6 & 8 including Peck’s The Decalogue (premiere) – New York
★★★✰✰ With his latest, The Decalogue, which opened on May 12, Justin Peck seems to have turned a new page…
Sounds of India Festival – Mark Morris Dance Group & Kerala Kalamandalam – New York
★★★★✰ 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 – Rewind Forward: Sea of Troubles, Self, Twilight, Lacrymosa, Untethered – London
★★★✰✰ Yorke Dance Project is unusual, among small modern dance companies, in its respect for musicality and for the demands it makes for skilled partnering.
Royal Ballet School – Annual Main Stage Performance 2016 – London
★★★★✰ The Royal Ballet School in particular includes something very special in their show – the closing Grand Defile, which always brings a lump to the throat and a feeling of pride.
