Dance
Has the Royal Ballet found its hero?
The Royal Ballet is a company in search of a prince. It has no lack of dancing princesses. You could…
How could anyone object to the Royal Ballet engaging in cultural appropriation?
La Bayadère opens with a sacred flame and ends with an earthquake. In between, Marius Petipa’s ballet of 1877 gives…
Bravura piss-taking from Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
‘Ballet is woman’ insisted George Balanchine, but ballet can also be a big man in a dress as any fan…
A smidge of self-indulgence amid the power and grace: Akram Khan’s Xenos reviewed
‘Comedy Sunil Lanba, Salman Quaraishi, Omar Syed…’ Names play from a crackling gramophone. We hear what they were before the…
Proper tutus, gorgeous designs, first-rate dancing: Royal Ballet’s new Swan Lake reviewed
The Royal Ballet’s 2016 Frankenstein was a masterclass in how not to make narrative dance and the news that Liam…
From buck dancing to Happy Feet: a short history of tap
Fire up YouTube on the iPad, tap in ‘tap’, then wave goodbye to the rest of your day: clip after…
How do these Shaolin monks square six shows a week with monking?
The Shaolin monks are no strangers to the stage. Their home in Dengfeng is a major stop on the Chinese…
Louise Levene meets the tormented queen of flamenco, who bewitched Dali & Peter Sellers
A frail old woman sits alone on a chair on a darkened stage. There are flowers in her hair. She…
The men give the women little to work with: Giselle reviewed
A bumper fortnight for Covent Garden florists thanks to a 20th-anniversary flower shower for the Royal Ballet’s Marianela Nunez and…
Wayne’s world
Ballet would have been an obvious revenue stream for Sadler’s Wells when it reopened back in 1998 but straight-up classics…
Pretty vacant
Alice is at it again. Christopher Wheeldon’s 2011 three-act ballet began another sell-out run at Covent Garden last week. It’s…
Age concern
Stephen Sondheim’s Follies takes a huge leap into the past. It’s 1971 and we meet two middle-aged couples who knew…
Not vintage Mariinsky
Not really a vintage Mariinsky season — an odd choice of repertoire and some hit-and-miss male casting — but the…
Mad about the boy
Tall, handsome boys with long legs and beautifully arched feet do not grow on trees (if only). Every ballet director…
Show up and show off
The Edinburgh Festival was founded as a response to war. The inaugural event, held in 1947, was the brainchild of…
Yes sir, we can boogie
It’s dance — but not as you know it. A giddy mass of flying limbs, sashaying hips and pouty faces.…
Northern Ballet has triumphed with Brontë: Jane Eyre reviewed
The difference between a poor ballet of the book (see the Royal Ballet’s Frankenstein) and a good one — indeed…
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…
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…
