Giselle: a most honest romance
Nuñez’s Giselle looks unusually light within this world. Her peasant dancing is clean and loose, its ease producing flow rather than force
Birmingham Royal Ballet: Don Quixote
Carlos Acosta’s sunny ballet provides “a lot of joy and a much-needed splash of sunshine on yet another grey, damp, dismal February day.”
Resolution 26: Room Dance Company, Kirstin Halliday, Lilah Bobak
An evening that reflected how contemporary choreography increasingly extends beyond movement into installation, ecology, costume and multimedia
Fun, laughs and a lot of love for dance: Chicos Mambo’s Tutu
Seventy minutes of scenes that poke fun at and parody dance in all its forms, although there are a couple of very poignant moments in there too
BalletMAR: From Ash to Promise
The young classical ensemble led by Marika Brussel and Richard Bermange return with three ballets that reimagine history and Jewish narratives
Resolution 26: MANACAN, Shea Sullivan, Jie Gao and Wally Groves
A varied selection of choreographic voices… Every work showed a different sense of direction, whether through ideas, energy or physical presence
Teaċ Daṁsa in Michael Keegan-Dolan’s MÁM
It’s a gathering. At times, it has the joy of a ceilidh, but it also has a dark, mysterious edge, and is often quite disconcerting.
Ballett Zürich with Timeframed
Three of the evening’s four pieces were variations on the pas de deux; contrasted by a modern, energy-loaded piece for 23 dancers.
Ballet Nights 010: Decadance
An evening that brought together well-known names and Ballet Nights favourites, and featured the UK debut of Mexico’s Ballet de Monterrey.
Fish Bowl by Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau
The three performers are quite superb. They manipulated the audience to perfection, taking us from crying with laughter, to laughing through tears…
Gauthier Dance in Akram Khan’s Turning of Bones
A tale of love and violence, of belonging to or being expelled, of life and death, all taking place in the liminal space between reality, dream, memory…