t may be that designer Peter Pabst is the unsung hero of Tanztheater Wuppertal’s “World Cities” extravaganza. When the lights go down at Sadler’s Wells for Der Fensterputzer(The Window-washer), the stage is dominated by a vast mountain of glowing red flowers, over four metres high, nine metres across, looming out
The technical term for Ratmansky’s 2003 The Bright Stream, now in repertory at American Ballet Theater, is a ‘romp’. That this piece can charm is a miracle itself: the 1935 original, with music by Shostakovich, a libretto by Adrian Piotrovsky and choreography by Fyodor Lopukhov, was condemned by Stalin. Piotrovsky
Ballo della Regina is a strange piece, for many reasons. A piece of minor Balanchine, it was created late in life for a dancer he clearly admired but who was not core to his vision. Strangest of all, he used music by Verdi, a composer whose music he had only
The Royal Ballet is frequently criticized for playing safe, relying too heavily on its tried-and-trusted crowd-pleasing three-acters. This very mixed bill, therefore, reads as outgoing director Monica Mason’s riposte. In terms of achievement, Christopher Wheeldon’s Polyphonia, returning to Opera House nearly a decade after it was first performed here, takes
Dance by and for people with no interest in dance An apocryphal story tells of an awful theatrical adaptation of the story of Anne Frank. When the Nazis arrive to search the house where the family are in hiding, an enraged theatre-goer shouts, “She’s in the attic!” Well, I didn’t
“I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works,” accuses the Mad Hatter. “It was the best butter,” replies the March Hare apologetically, in Lewis Carroll’s original tale. Butter might or might not suit the works onstage in the Royal Ballet’s everything-including-the-kitchen-sink version of Alice in Wonderland. We’ll never know, since
“Do you feel morally superior to the Taliban? Well, do you?” And we’re off, with another of director/choreographer Lloyd Newson’s interrogations of a taboo subject. DV8 Physical Theatre is 25 years old this season, yet if anything, it, and Newson, have become more challenging, not less as the years go
NDT2 is a fascinating beast. The “junior” company of the venerable Nederlands Dans Theater, it features dancers on the cusp of maturity, aged generally between sixteen and their mid-twenties. Here, in choreography created especially for them, one can watch talent develop. And since the grown-up NDT-ers are known as some
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