Sadler’s wells
A last dose of vitamin D before the clocks go back: Royal Ballet’s triple bill reviewed
Were those gerberas in Francesca Hayward’s bouquet on opening night? Gentlemen admirers take note: no woman, ballerina or otherwise, has…
Nothing sings and shimmies like Alvin Ailey
Hit them with your best shot? Or save the best till last? Almost 30 years after Alvin Ailey’s death in…
Daffy charm and diabolo tricks: Bolshoi’s The Bright Stream reviewed
The Bright Stream is a ballet about a collective farm. Forget everything you know about collectivism — the failed harvests,…
Electrifying: English National Ballet’s She Persisted reviewed
‘Where was the Kahlo brow?’ asked my guest in the first interval of English National Ballet’s She Persisted, a triple…
A masterclass of menace and magnificence: Romeo and Juliet reviewed
Two households, both alike in dignity. Capulets in red tights, Montagues in green. Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet opens in…
Odious, endless dross: Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch reviewed
Please believe that I try to give every production my full attention, to do due diligence, to blink and miss…
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…
William Forsythe on the day the US government threatened to arrest him
William Forsythe has been called a lot of things in his four decades as a dancemaker: wilful provocateur, ‘pretentious as…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
Millepied’s final spring programme for the Paris Opera Ballet is brazenly American
Paris Opera Ballet plays hard to get. It doesn’t deign to travel all the way over here, thanks to a…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The best ballerinas in Britain at the moment are hairy and male
There was blood on the walls and floor at the birth of Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet in 1965. The…
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…
Ninja Turtles have no place in Cinderella
What could induce a grown-up, rational, childless person to go to see the ballet of Cinderella? You’ll expect to cringe…
