A Young Actor’s Tale Told Through Vigorous Dance Stories, self-described as “The Tap Dance Sensation”, is a short, high-octane show of non-stop dancing, with a perfunctory, barely understandable plot, that doesn’t much matter because the dancers are so good and the production’s visual element so strong, mostly due to Alex Hardellet’s lighting design, that it […]
About Teresa Guerreiro
Manon, The Royal Ballet
Manon, Kenneth MacMillan’s transporting ballet, opens at Covent Garden Manon, Abbé Prevost’s novel of innocence corrupted in 18th-century Paris, where abject poverty coexisted with an obscenely rich, amoral aristocracy and everything was for sale, offered fertile material for choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan, a peerless chronicler of tempestuous human feelings and frailties. Shocking when it premiered […]
The Herd/Less, Sadler’s Wells East
South African Artist Mamela Niamza Returns to Dance Umbrella The Herd/Less opened the live in-person section of this year’s Dance Umbrella festival at a poorly attended Sadler’s Wells East, once again illustrating the festival’s ongoing drift away from dance. Time was when you could look forward to London’s annual festival of dance in the expectation […]
A Centenary Celebration
The Royal Ballet School’s 100th Birthday Bash One hundred years ago, a visionary woman of indomitable will, Ninette de Valois, founded what she called The Academy of Choreographic Art, an institution that would train dancers “to meet the various demands of the theatre”, through the teachings of classical school. Spool forward one century, and today […]
Robert Ryman, The Real Thing
American Artist Robert Ryman’s Work Featured in Major Barbican Exhibition Robert Ryman, The Real Thing, the Barbican’s comprehensive retrospective of the American artist’s work, immediately faces the viewer with a conundrum. A former musician, Robert Ryman (1930-2019), believed that both music and painting were best understood through direct and immediate experience, rather than through intellectual […]
Jess & Morgs, Deepfake
The Award-Winning Duo Mash Dance and Technology in Deepfake “All the world’s information is in the palm of your hand, and you can’t believe a word of it”, says one of the lead characters in Deepfake, the latest multimedia dance-theatre work by the exciting duo Jess & Morgs. It’s a comment that should resonate with […]
The Brown Suite, Richmond Theatre
James Brown’s Legendary Music Anchors New Dance Show The Brown Suite Put together a powerful, evocative musical score and a cast of truly exciting dancers and you’re more than half-way to a crowd-pleasing show. A cogent plot would perhaps push things a bit further; but even with the flimsiest of storylines The Brown Suite is […]
Pastoral, Pam Tanowitz Dance
Tanowitz Weaves Her Magic on Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony Pam Tanowtiz is becoming quite the regular on London stages and I, for one, am absolutely delighted. I’m not the only one: through her commissions for The Royal Ballet (her fifth piece for Covent Garden will open early next year), and the Barbican, where her third co-commission, […]
The Sleeping Beauty in Cinemas
ENB’s Signature Classic Comes to a Cinema Near You English National Ballet’s sumptuous The Sleeping Beauty, filmed at its Royal Albert Hall debut earlier this year and reviewed below, will be screened in cinemas nationwide 13 – 18 October. Kenneth MacMillan’s The Sleeping Beauty, entrusted in the UK to English National Ballet (ENB), is a […]
Northern Ballet, Three Short Ballets
Northern Ballet Revives Two Works Alongside a Brand New Piece The programme that opened Northern Ballet’s short residency at the Linbury Theatre is not quite the programme that will be shown in subsequent performances. This is because Northern Ballet and The Royal Ballet used the first night as an opportunity to to pay homage to […]