Ballet
Royal Opera’s Tannhäuser is one of the ugliest stagings I have set eyes on
Cursed, or perhaps blessed, with almost no visual memory at all, I had almost completely forgotten what the Royal Opera’s…
Predictably meh: Scottish Ballet’s new Swan Lake reviewed
Every ballet company wants a box-office earner. But why Scottish Ballet’s leader Christopher Hampson kept on at David Dawson until…
A new dance piece in which race definitely matters: Ballet Black’s Triple Bill reviewed
Ballet’s romantic mantra could be summed up by John Keats’s ballad ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, in which a young…
I felt the earth move just as before: Akram Khan’s Kaash reviewed
You revisit an old love with wariness. Time’s passed for both of you — sharp edges have been smoothed, and…
Now that's what I call sex: Birmingham Royal Ballet's Ashton Double Bill reviewed
That joke about the young bull who tells the old bull, ‘Hey, Dad, see all those cows — let’s run…
Wheeldon’s new ballet lacks guts: Royal Ballet’s Strapless reviewed
How could it possibly go wrong? The magnetic, seething Russian star Natalia Osipova playing the tragic woman in John Singer…
Gorgeous, visionary sights from Akram Khan at the Roundhouse
How much of a compromise does a fashionable choreographer loved by all have to make with his paymasters? When he’s…
Fascinating, sexy, improbably compelling and scathingly funny: The Big Short reviewed
The Big Short is a drama about the American financial collapse of 2008. It talks you through sub-prime mortgages, tranches,…
We’re entering a new era for dance - expect big ballets with big stories
Dance has its own archaeological periods, and 2016’s schedules are confirming what 2015 indicated — that the era of dances…
Why did a Russian ballet dancer throw acid in his boss’s face?
The 16th June 1961 and 17th January 2013 are two indelible dates in the annals of Russian ballet. Two events…
Is Twitter now in charge of the Royal Ballet’s artistic programming?
For all the billing and cooing on public forums about the Royal Ballet’s The Two Pigeons revival, there’s a silent…
Rambert Dance: one piercing masterpiece - and one dud
Mark Baldwin, artistic director of Rambert Dance, must take responsibility for most of the good times I’ve had recently, midwife…
Carlos Acosta’s incoherent Carmen is a disaster
The love that asks no questions, the love that pays the price… The amount of unconditional love sloshing about at…
This Juliet needs a new Romeo
You always remember your first time, don’t you? And in ballet one imagines that Juliet wants to remember her first…
Giselle has floored many a ballerina — it did so again last week
English has all sorts of emotive metaphors for how we feel about the ground. We’re floored. Or well grounded. Or…
War, socialist tyranny and the oppression of the handicapped - welcome to the new dance season
If there’s one thing scarcer than hen’s teeth in serious choreography nowadays, it’s a light heart. When was the last…
Dance from Edinburgh: a flamenco master who could tell classical ballet a thing or two
Every August when London dims, Edinburgh calls, promising nothing less than ‘the greats of the arts’ at the International Festival.…
Sylvie Guillem’s better than ever in her final, final Coliseum farewell
The blackness that sweeps along the stage behind Sylvie Guillem’s disappearing figure in the Russell Maliphant piece on her farewell…
You can feel as if you’re in a colony of rabbits: Matthew Bourne’s Car Man reviewed
Hot, languorous, sizzling… I was thinking what an ideal show Matthew Bourne’s noir comedy is to watch on a summer’s…
The Sun King deserves better than this silly cabaret from Birmingham Royal Ballet
It’s a comfort that the creation of a new ballet inspired by French court entertainment can still happen in the…
Is that Sylvie Guillem? Or R2-D2? Guillem's farewell dance at Sadler’s Wells reviewed
There’s been a clutch of middle-aged danseuses taking leave of life in one way or another recently. We’ve seen the…
Rapture - and loathing: Woolf Works at the Royal Ballet reviewed
People have been saying that Wayne McGregor’s new Woolf Works has reinvented the three-act ballet, but not so. William Forsythe…
Don’t believe Orson Welles, says his biographer Simon Callow — especially when he calls himself a failure
Orson Welles would have been 100 this month. When he died in 1985, aged 70, the wonder was that he…
Rosie Kay’s 5 Soldiers: brutishly physical and powerfully striking
In dance, it’s usually the moment the boys start fighting that challenges your suspension of disbelief. Synchronised fencing (MacMillan’s Romeo…
La Fille mal gardee at the Royal Opera House reviewed: light, lithe and tender
The current talking-point at the Royal Ballet is the Russians milling around. One can sound unfortunately as if one’s starting…
