February 2007
News: Bill to regulate dance teaching
A Ten Minute Rule Bill has been presented in parliament today addressing dance teachers qualifications and regulation. The proposer of the bill is Meg Hillier, Labour MP for Hackney and South Shoreditch, who is … Continue Reading
Review: Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in The Bull at Barbican Theatre
What a haunting, bleak yet powerfully moving finale to Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre’s’ The Bull. The stage floor is covered by ochre coloured mud, with rain pouring from the ceiling. All twelve perfo… Continue Reading
Ballet Flamenco Eva Yerbabuena in El Huso de la Memoria at Sadler's Wells
‘But you do see Yerbabuena’s real gifts in two scenes. In “Espumas del Recuerdo”, she appears in a white-and-orange dress with a long ruffled train. She manages the fabric brilliantly, kicking it into great sweeps and swirls of cloth. Her final…
Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in The Bull at Barbican Theatre
‘Draw a line from Samuel Beckett to Quentin Tarantino and somewhere along it you’ll find Michael Keegan-Dolan.’
American Ballet Theatre at Sadler's Wells
‘The company are at their best, unsurprisingly, in American works, and their reading of Mark Morris’s Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, an abstract piece to Virgil Thomson’s piano etudes, is gorgeous, especially a legato section danced by Angel Corella.’
Australian Dance Theatre in Held at Sadler's Wells (& UK tour)
‘Their movement is similarly eclectic, a fast and fearless collection of corkscrew turns, scissor-legged leaps, jerking contortions and collapsing rolls delivered with a muscular yet mechanically propulsive pounce to a soundtrack of battering beats and saturatin…
Ballet Flamenco Eva Yerbabuena in El Huso de la Memoria at Sadler's Wells
‘El Huso de la Memoria doesn’t always meet its own challenges, but it is boldly imagined, and promises more from Yerbabuena in the future.’
Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in The Bull at Barbican Theatre
‘It’s bleak and raucous at the same time, a dark, smart farce pulsing with lurid characterisations and vicious potshots at the cornerstones of Irish culture.’
Ballet Flamenco Eva Yerbabuena in El Huso de la Memoria at Sadler's Wells
‘Yerbabuena was the redemptive heart of an otherwise gloomy performance. She danced three times, each distinct in feel, look and tone.’
Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in The Bull at Barbican Theatre
‘This is a characteristic Keegan-Dolan production, with cartoonish energy, wandering narrative, dull patches and sharply pointed moments.’
Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in The Bull at Barbican Theatre
‘Some of the violence is so shocking that you feel uneasy laughing. The comedy is at its best in the digs at the Riverdance phenomenon (the twinkle-toed Colin Dunne is a star). While I’ve no doubt that the original 12th-century epic contained quite as much fo…
Australian Dance Theatre in Held at Sadler's Wells (& UK tour)
‘It’s like a scene from a gladiator movie, digitally enhanced.’
Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in The Bull at Barbican Theatre
‘Part of the show’s delight is the witty, improbable and outrageously graphic detail with which the deaths are staged – knitting needles to the throat, a golf iron to the skull. But just as entertaining are the swipes the show takes at modern Ireland…
Royal Ballet in Swan Lake at Royal Opera House
‘Rare, too, the clarity of Thiago Soares’s portrait of Siegfried, every moment understood, vital in emotion. No grand bravura in dancing, but sensitivity and intelligence of an exceptional order.’
Australian Dance Theatre in Held at Sadler's Wells (& UK tour)
‘The movement is crass, and reeks of 1980s rebelliousness’