Steps and words. Francesca Hayward and Alexander Campbell in The Limit
Kristen McNally’s light touch choreography fits perfectly. Nestling beautifully with the text, it’s sometimes playful, occasionally spiky, always colloquial.
UK
The Royal Ballet: Anemoi, The Cellist
The Cellist: a fine piece of dance drama, and a fitting memoir of a brilliant and popular musician whose career and life were so tragically cut short.
Exploring a taboo: Forbidden by Aditi Mangaldas
Mangaldas commands the stage throughout. Forbidden is a journey, her journey based on personal emotions and experiences.
Divine. Pam Tanowitz and David Lang’s Song of Songs
Stripped of emotional content… her choreography is cool, refined and restrained. It’s also intensely beautiful.
Sound and movement: MOS by Ioanna Paraskevopoulou
They create their soundtrack using a variety of everyday objects and materials scattered around the stage that looks like a… children’s playground
The Royal Ballet: Don Quixote
You can’t deny it’s a crowd-pleaser. Sunny and warm, full of dancing bullfighters, gypsies and other locals, Don Quixote is real feelgood ballet
Lore by James Wilton Dance
There are lots of lifts and combinations. Unfortunately, they are repeated and repeated in sequences that themselves also become repetitive
Change Tempo (Su Pin-wen and Alexandre Fandard)
Su Pin-wen (蘇品文) and Alexandre Fandard are engaging performers with considerable stage presence. Yet both works, failed to deliver fully
Message in a Bottle, extraordinary and totally unforgettable
A complete unity, where everything is slotted-in and tied together so profoundly that it is hard to imagine them as separate entities
An evening of many moods and fine dance from Ailey 2
Pick of the evening was Robert Battle’s The Hunt. About the predatory side of human nature, it’s intense. Very intense.
Tavaziva Dance: Boy’s Khaya
Boy’s Khaya has dance, music and spoken text but the elements do not always find themselves on the same page.