June 2012
Kids Week returns this summer
Kids go FREE to top London shows this summer, 1-31 August. Throughout August, any child aged 16 and under can go FREE to a participating show when accompanied by a full paying adult. You can also purchase up to… Continue Reading
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch- Viktor - Sadler's Wells
This is Tanztheater as it often is: an arena for asphyxiating tedium, dreary predictabilities, incident by rote, performance cast in terms of routine – Bausch events are safe haven for clichés. Viktor drones on, using up – like every major bore – all the air in …
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch- Viktor - Sadler's Wells
Like most of this iconic German choreographer’s works, Viktor mixes dance, speech and strangeness, a jumble of ideas and images that can be powerful or exasperating or both.
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch- Viktor - Sadler's Wells
If you don’t know Bausch’s work – or even if you do – it is not the easiest of introductions, but its darkly comic intensity is thrilling. There is hardly any actual dance in Viktor, just occasional swathes of unfolding movement, that sweep acro…
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch- Viktor - Sadler's Wells
As always with Bausch, you have to immerse yourself into the slipstream of her imagination, picking up images as they come.
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch- Viktor - Sadler's Wells
"As in most of Pina Bausch’s oeuvre, Viktor is vast. Its component parts are fairly simple, but its scope monumental." The first show in the World Cities 2012 opens at Sadler's Wells Continue Reading
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch- Viktor - Sadler's Wells
Here, as you expect in Italy (as a tourist), the past quietly eats the present; today’s Italians, stylishly costumed all’ italiano where Armani meets Fellini, perform inside a gigantic, menacing earthwork from the top of which a gravedigger remorselessly shovels di…
Flawless/English National Ballet, Against Time at Hammersmith Apollo
…a truly curious and sustained exploration of these dance forms would have delivered so much more. There’s a world of choreographic possibilities to be had, from putting the melodic, expressive lines of ballet in play with the rhythmic wit and warp of hip-hop. …
Mark Bruce Company - Made in Heaven - Wilton's Music Hall
…he’s a choreographer with a fine, old-fashioned craft: the dance sequences that animate these dreams are clever and musical, performed by an excellent cast. And it must be said, there’s no other British choreographer producing work quite like it.
Royal Ballet - The Prince of The Pagodas at the Royal Opera House
Even with the musical and choreographic edits that have tightened up the Royal Ballet’s revival, Pagodas remains an obdurate challenge.
The Astaires – Fred and Adele
A new book by Kathleen Riley documents the often overlooked relationship between Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. Continue Reading
The power of Pina
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch — World Cities 2012 - the unprecedented season of works by the late, great German choreographer Pina Bausch opens at Sadler's Wells this evening. Over the next five we… Continue Reading
Royal Ballet - The Prince of The Pagodas at the Royal Opera House
MacMillan is reported to have said that ‘Pagodas is a great ballet waiting to get out’ and it seems that some of the obstacles to fulfilling this aim have now been pruned. Continue Reading
Mark Bruce Company - Made in Heaven - Wilton's Music Hall
I usually avoid horror films like the plague, but upon entering Wilton’s Music Hall, I feel as though I have stepped right into one... Continue Reading
Rambert Dance Company - New Choreography - Queen Elizabeth Hall
In a bill of new works by company dancers, Jonathan Goddard & Gemma Nixon’s 'Heist' was both the simplest in theme, undoubtedly contributing to its effectiveness, and by far the most sophisticated. Continue Reading