A New High-Octane Work for the Young Dancers of Shechter II Part rave, part ritual, relentlessly physical and danced to loud, throbbing music, Hofesh Shechter’s In the Brain is a high-energy, pulsating work, the kind that we’ve come to expect from this choreographer, showing many of his characteristic tropes, yet somehow fresh and newly engaging […]
Cross Current
Two American Dance Companies Share a Bill at the Place Two American contemporary dance companies that use movement as a vehicle to build community, Matthew Westerby Company and Ariel Rivka Dance, shared a bill for a one-off show at The Place entitled Cross Current. It marked the London debut of the former and the latter’s […]
London Dance Previews – July to December 2026
The Very Best of Dance to Look Forward To From Summer specials all the way to Christmas staples, the coming semester brings an abundance of dance, both national and international, to London. What follows is not an exhaustive list, but rather a selection of highlights – the shows that stand out from the crowd. Royal […]
Colossus, Queen Elizabeth Hall
Australian Choreographer Stephanie Lake’s UK Debut As every dictator and cult leader knows, there’s a special dynamic to large groups of people moving in strictly coordinated unison. It never fails to have an impact: it astounds, dazzles or frightens. And for a while Colossus, Australian choreographer Stephanie Lake’s work for a massive group of well-marshalled […]
Turn It Out With Tiler Peck and Friends
Dazzling Virtuosic Dance from New York Tiler Peck is one of the most thrilling dancers in the world today. Technically, there is nothing she can’t do, and she does it with panache, contagious joy of dancing, intense musicality and, when required, vertiginous, almost superhuman speed. An opportunity to see her dance, then, feels like a […]
Russell Maliphant Dance Company, Landscapes
Three exceptional dancers in a magical triple bill. Three exceptional dancers. Three short dances, each mesmerising in its own way. One memorable evening at Sadler’s Wells East, even if its huge stage is far too big for the kind of intimate programme which Russell Maliphant has been staging over the past few years. Two of […]
Sweet Mambo by Pina Bausch – Sadler’s Wells Theatre
Legendary choreographer Pina Bausch’s richly textured penultimate work makes its long-awaited London premiere Legendary German choreographer Pina Bausch once famously said she was less interested in how people move than she was in what moves them. It is this idea that lies at the heart of Sweet Mambo, Bausch’s beautiful, emotionally intense penultimate work, which […]
Pierrot Lunaire – Linbury Theatre – RBO
An evocative dance-theatre meditation with stunning musical accompaniment. The haunting music of Pierrot Lunaire, written in 1912 for a singer and a small group of instrumentalists, sets 21 poems by the Belgian poet Albert Giraud (in German translation) to music. Three sets of seven poems revolve around Pierrot, the clown from commedia dell’arte. It’s a […]
Dance Umbrella DU25 Preview
Dance Umbrella Marks its 47th Anniversary Dance Umbrella bills itself as a festival of all things dance. Now just three years shy of its half-century, over the years it has brought to London a mind-blowing variety of dance makers and performers, both established and untested, national and international. And it never ceases to evolve. Under […]
Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet at Sadler’s Wells
The movement to bring together the worlds of rock music and contemporary dance took another step forward a couple of nights ago with the opening of ‘Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet’, a dance reimagining on the Sadler’s Wells stage of Pete Townshend’s legendary 1973 rock opera.