June 2011
News: Dance for Parkinson's - new UK research
English National Ballet and Roehampton University announce breakthrough research into the benefits of dance for people with Parkinson’s. Inspired by the pioneering work of the Mark Morris Dance Group in Ne… Continue Reading
News: Edward Watson
Royal Ballet principal Edward Watson discusses his roles and also his nerves ahead of his performance at the O2 later this month. “He admits to feeling nervous about performing before such a large audience… Continue Reading
Frauke Requardt in Episode at The Place
“But because Requardt’s choreography is so rigorously exact in its shaping and dynamic, these characters convince us that, even at their most eccentric, they are acting on serious motives. They can be urgent, funny and sometimes very touching. And their jo…
News: Background Dancer Blues
Will Storr finds out that life as a background dancer is far from being the whirl of glitz and glamour that you might think. Long hours, little pay and fierce competition is the reality that many face. “In… Continue Reading
Rambert Dance Company in Roses / Monolith / Cardoon Club at Sadler's Wells
“couldn’t the company have celebrated its four score years and five with a bill less deathly dull than this?”
Dave St Pierre in Un Peu de Tendresse Bordel de Merde! at Sadler's Wells
“But there are moments of beauty, clear, decipherable emotions and a genuine humour that is rare in contemporary dance”
News: Birmingham Royal Ballet back from Japan
Birmingham Royal Ballet has just returned from its tour of Japan. The company took Peter Wright’s The Sleeping Beauty and Frederick Ashton’s The Dream and Daphnis and Chloë to the cities of Tokyo, K… Continue Reading
Royal Ballet in Scenes de ballet / Voluntaries / The Rite of Spring at Royal Opera House
‘In Scènes de ballet, choreographed in 1948, Frederick Ashton created a work of unanswerable formal perfection…’
Royal Ballet in Scenes de ballet / Voluntaries / The Rite of Spring at Royal Opera House
‘Steven McRae’s sacrificial Chosen One (a role first danced by the then 20-year-old Monica Mason) is a fireball of an interpretation: aghast at his fate one second, aggressively embracing it the next; in the evening, Edward Watson goes for all-out spiralli…
Dave St Pierre in Un Peu de Tendresse Bordel de Merde! at Sadler's Wells
‘Quite how the show justifies itself as dance theatre isn’t the issue so much as the question: why? What, beyond supplying cheap burlesque shocks, does Dave St-Pierre think he’s doing? (Sabrina, in a telling aside, remarks on how dancers are the ultimat…
Dave St Pierre in Un Peu de Tendresse Bordel de Merde! at Sadler's Wells
‘While St-Pierre is working hard at being scandalous, he uses gender stereotypes so casually that I wonder if he’s noticed them. His use of male nudity tends to be comic. A dozen naked men put on blonde wigs and squeak through baby talk. When the women take…
Dave St Pierre in Un Peu de Tendresse Bordel de Merde! at Sadler's Wells
No stars ‘An unforgivable 110 minutes straight through, Un peu de tendresse bordel de merde! is essentially an alternation of deliberately lobotomous naked cavorting – including plenty of real spitting and simulated masturbation and bestial sex – and cl…
Dave St Pierre in Un Peu de Tendresse Bordel de Merde! at Sadler's Wells
‘The serious theme, if there is one, is that no amount of sexual frankness can disguise our longing for emotional tenderness, and for that you can keep your clothes on.’
Dave St Pierre in Un Peu de Tendresse Bordel de Merde! at Sadler's Wells
‘… the experience was the most unpleasant I’ve ever had in a theatre. And the rest of the show? Lazy, derivative and very, very provincial, with more walk-outs than I’ve ever seen at Sadler’s Wells.’
Dave St Pierre in Un Peu de Tendresse Bordel de Merde! at Sadler's Wells
‘It’s under-nuanced, over-predictable stuff stretched thinly across a good 50 minutes of the show.’