Bizet’s Carmen Inspires Bourne’s Raunchiest Work I’ll be honest. The first time I saw Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man at its London premiere at the Old Vic in 2000, I disliked it intensely. Since then, Matthew Bourne’s tale of sex, sleaze, jealousy and murder among car mechanics in 1950s small-town America, very loosely inspired by […]
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare’s Globe
Flirting and Flamenco in a Bailar of the Sexes Why isn’t Love’s Labour’s Lost a better loved Shakespeare play? It borrows familiar components audiences know from other pieces – the disguises of Twelfth Night, the “play within a play” antics of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and plenty of romantic chicanery and silliness. Less frequently staged […]
Marianela – Timeless
A Celebration of Royal Ballet Veteran Principal Marianela Núñez Marianela Nuñez is very easy to love. Her radiant smile has been lighting up the stage at Covent Garden for 28 years, her all-consuming love of dance bringing an added dimension to every step she makes – and how she makes them! At 44-years-old, the Royal […]
Hofesh Shechter: In the Brain
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 […]
The Royal Ballet School Performance
A Glowing Centenary Performance by the UK’s Premier Ballet School What a year 1926 was! It witnessed the births of Sir Peter Wright, dancer, choreographer and director extraordinaire, Glen Tetley, the American choreographer who first married classical ballet and contemporary dance, and (not forgetting naturalist and UK national treasure David Attenborough and Queen Elizabeth II) […]
State Ballet of Georgia, Swan Lake
An Emotion-Free Production of the Timeless Classic Here’s the good news: true love comprehensively defeated evil, the sorcerer Von Rothbart is dead, and Prince Siegfried and his beloved Princess Odette, freed from her cursed life as a swan, are poised to live happily ever after. And there’s more good news in the current iteration of […]
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 […]
Steps Toward Tomorrow
English National Ballet School Summer Performance 2026 There was plenty of talent on display in Steps Toward Tomorrow, English National Ballet School’s summer performance, presented at the small Bloomsbury Theatre. Steps Toward Tomorrow consisted of five tailor-made pieces, followed after the interval by Act III of The Sleeping Beauty in simplified form – a […]
Songs of the Bulbul, Aakash Odedra Company
An Ancient Sufi Story Brought to Life in Dance The bulbul, or nightingale, is a central figure in Persian culture, its bewitching song representing a spiritual seeker, yearning for union with the divine. It is, then, particularly troubling that the ancient Sufi myth of the bulbul tells of the bird’s increasing confinement, so that its […]
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 […]