Royal ballet
Manon can be magnificent, this one was merely meh
Manon: minx or martyr? There are two ways to play Kenneth MacMillan’s courtesan. Is Manon an ingénue, a guileless country…
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s #MeToo Medusa is a bad hair day from Hades
Medusa is the bad hair day from Hades. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s retelling of the Greek myth is frizzy, tangled and…
Still far from perfect but chaps will like it: Royal Ballet’s Frankenstein reviewed
Choreographer Richard Alston is now 70 and his latest outing at Sadler’s Wells is a greatest hits medley. As with…
Forget the Don – come for the Mataphwoar Ryoichi Hirano: Royal Ballet’s Don Quixote reviewed
The trouble with Don Quixote is Don Quixote. Whenever the doddering, delusional Don is onstage, tilting at windmills, riding his…
January as you would wish it: Royal Ballet’s Les Patineurs reviewed
The Royal Ballet’s Les Patineurs is January as you would wish it. No slush, no new-year sales, no streaming chest…
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…
Why Mayerling is a #MeToo minefield
Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling is a #MeToo minefield. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary is a serial seducer, a man of many…
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…
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…
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…
The nymphs are hit and miss, but Osipova is a witty, multifaceted Sylvia: the Royal Ballet’s Sylvia reviewed
You can pay homage to a ballet classic or you can tear it up and reinvent it. Both approaches were…
Reducing the lead to an demented rape victim is just what ballet needs: The Wind reviewed
A kindly cowboy, an East Coast bride, adultery, murder and madness. The Wind, Dorothy Scarborough’s 1925 Texas gothic novel (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…
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…
The Royal Ballet is literally losing the plot
If a football manager produces a string of losses, the writing is on the wall and out he goes. He’s…
Does Tamara Rojo really think female choreographers are being stifled by sexism?
Tamara Rojo programmed three female choreographers for her English National Ballet spring bill because, she said, she had never danced…
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…
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…
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…
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…
