Le Patin Libre – Threshold – London
★★★★✰ If there is a major difference between Le Patin Libre of 2014 and now, then surely it lies in this merger of these skaters’ extreme skills with the same elite capability in their artistic collaborators.
Les Etés de la Danse, Paris – Homage to Jerome Robbins, Programme 1 – New York City Ballet, Joffrey Ballet
★★★★✰ The programme, performed by two very different American ballet companies, displayed Robbins’s versatility while revealing the similarities in his approach to music.
Kevin and Karen Clifton – Kevin and Karen Dance – London
★★★★✰ This show defied the norm: a counter-intuitive observation about a spin-off from the archetypal routine of a Saturday evening institution that millions of us watch with our feet up.
New York City Ballet – All Robbins No. 1 – Bernstein Collaborations bill – New York
★★★✰✰ One of Robbins’ great talents was sniffing out the style of his time, but this inevitably places a date stamp on his work.
Royal Ballet – Bernstein Centenary: Yugen, The Age of Anxiety, Corybantic Games – London
★★★✰✰ Leonard Bernstein wrote (in 1949): “I have a deep suspicion that every work I write, for whatever medium, is really theatre music in some way.’ Many choreographers have taken up the challenge, though his quasi-metaphysical musings have usually eluded them: dance is more corporeal than music.
Jerome Bel – The Show Must Go On – New York
★★★★★ Jérôme Bel has been called many things, from conceptual artist to choreographer. If art is supposed to put a mirror up to humanity and at the same time challenge convention, Bel is certainly an artist, and one who has also referred to himself as a “philosopher of dance.”
The McOnie Company – Jekyll and Hyde – London
★★★✰✰ Drew McOnie’s aim in his dance-theatre version of Jekyll and Hyde is to tell a ripping yarn without the use of words. He’s very much a Matthew Bourne disciple…
Juilliard Dance – Roses, Moves, Symphony of Psalms – New York
★★★✰✰ The dancers are young, but already skilled. They’re well trained, well-rounded. But they don’t yet have strong artistic personalities. That can be a good thing…
New York City Ballet – Harlequinade, N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz – New York
One expects Harlequinade to be a fairly routine and dramatically flat affair. But Tiler Peck and Joaquin De Luz – as Colombine and Harlequin – take it to another level.
Philippe Decouflé Company DCA – Contact – London
It’s undoubtedly fun in Decouflé’s world… but you do start to wish someone would hold your hand through it for a while.
TanzOlymp 2014 – Berlin
For four days, over 1,000 young dancers from 35 countries competed – with smiles – in the eleventh TanzOlymp, a dance competition for students from the ages of 8 to 21.
Royal Opera House production – The Wind in the Willows – London
The’ Wind in the Willows’ is the Royal Opera House’s first transfer to the West End. I hope other shows will follow…
Joey McKneely / Jerome Robbins – West Side Story – London
I said it was the must-see show of the year in 2008, and – while there are a lot of great musicals now around in the West End today – this is still one that must be seen.
Geneva Ballet – Romeo and Juliet – Hong Kong
Bouvier’s concept is valid and interesting, the execution less satisfying. She is certainly a talented choreographer and produces some striking images…
New York City Ballet – N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz, Waltz Project – New York
N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz is certainly not Robbins’ finest or most original work but perhaps because of its relative straightforwardness, it reveals much about what is so remarkable about this choreographer.
Sadler’s Wells Sampled – companies from Hip hop to Ballet – London
Sampled offered smorgasbord snippets of the goodies that will be gracing the stage of Sadlers Wells Theatre this coming season. This show, like cinema trailers, entices viewers to decide what to see, or what to miss. However, there was nothing shown in Sampled that should be missed!
San Francisco Ballet – Romeo and Juliet – San Francisco
Kochetkova and Boada were so transcendent that even this microscope-eyed critic could soar with them beyond the less than ideal frame of Tomasson’s version.
