September 2006
The Place Prize Final at Robin Howard Dance Theatre, The Place
Wednesday 27 September The Place Prize Final has shaped up to be a genuinely exciting and diverse programme of dance. All the work resonates with relevance to contemporary life. The pieces tackle, respectively: … Continue Reading
Theatre Museum to close
The V&A and the Royal Opera House have announced that they are unable to go ahead with the partnership to run a new centre on the site of the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. The organisations said the stic… Continue Reading
The Place Prize Final at Robin Howard Dance Theatre, The Place
‘The nicest surprise is Nina Rajarani’s QUICK!, in which four guys in city clothes dance the most testosterone-infused bharatanatyam I have seen.’
The Place Prize Final at Robin Howard Dance Theatre, The Place
‘There’s no doubt in my mind who deserves the big prize. Nina Rajarani, who runs her own company Srishti, is competing with Quick!, a terrific piece for four men in shirts and ties who strut about like peacocks in the workplace.’
Ballet Boyz in encore at Sadler's Wells
‘Charles Linehan’s Jjanke is a kind of reduced mazurka, which has the two men circling each other in spare, muscular phrases; and while the space they’re in looks as deserted as an ex-eastern bloc dancehall, the men’s intimate, easy connection …
Stand and Stare
Darshan Singh Bhuller’s celebration of the work of L.S. Lowry, commissioned by The Lowry, Salford and Rambert Dance Company opens at the Lowry this week… He talks about the inspiration he found in Lo… Continue Reading
The Boyz are back in town..
“Sometimes I go to watch dance and the average age on stage is 22 and it bores me to tears because all they have to offer are lovely legs and feet. There has to be something more to this art form, and what… Continue Reading
Les Ballets Trockadero de Montecarlo at Peacock Theatre
‘Sometimes with the Trocks there comes a performance that transcends comedy and just for a second you completely buy into the fantasy that this could be a real night at the ballet.’
Sylvie Guillem & Akram Khan in Sacred Monsters at Sadler's Wells
‘Physically, they are opposites … Yet they don’t look incongruous: their tremendous physical abilities unite them, together with their shared sense of daring.’
Sylvie Guillem & Akram Khan in Sacred Monsters at Sadler's Wells
‘Only when they come together in that image of a moving god does the piece attain a kind of magical communion.’
Sylvie Guillem & Akram Khan in Sacred Monsters at Sadler's Wells
‘For me the sole point of interest is the extent to which it’s Guillem with her lean and loosely structured body who looks awkward and gawky in this ill-defined play-dancing while the more compact Khan looks almost at home, if grossly under-stretched.’
Sylvie Guillem & Akram Khan in Sacred Monsters at Sadler's Wells
‘This Guillem/Khan event is chilly (except when Khan dances), self-conscious and unrelentingly portentous.’
Sylvie Guillem & Akram Khan in Sacred Monsters at Sadler's Wells
‘Instead of allowing it to be what it wants to be – the fl irty collision of two thrilling talents – Cools has dressed the whole thing in the clothes of the conceptual artevent.’
Merce Cunningham Dance Company in Ocean at The Roundhouse
‘And because Cunningham and his dancers access nature’s random and implacable rhythms with such acuity, you have a sense of participating in something beyond theatre.’
Merce Cunningham Dance Company in Ocean at The Roundhouse
‘Ocean, with the marine roarings and borborygms and whispers of its score, with its dances that can be like abstractions of waves or birds or sea-legends, is extraordinary as a creation, and magnificently danced. It is also, rather less magnificently, 90 unbroken m…