Ballet

Interviewing for MI6 sounds to have been even scarier a century ago than it must be today. Candidates would enter an office to find a man with a ‘large intelligent head’ seated behind a desk and absorbed in paperwork. Everything would appear normal until he picked up a penknife and stabbed his own leg. A prospective agent who flinched at the sight might do himself out of the job. It is brilliant: carefully crafted, closely scripted, immaculately edited and best of all perfectly cast Rather like one of those rumoured Oxbridge interviews (candidates for a fellowship at All Souls were reportedly served a cherry pie at dinner to test what

One of the few indisputably great ballerinas of her generation, Natalia Osipova is a magnificent exemplar of the Russian school, her training at the Bolshoi furnishing her with a steely security of technique, powerful stage personality, and spirit of dauntless daring. Happily based at the Royal Ballet since 2013, she’s now also one of ours. As popular inside the company as she is with audiences, and much missed while she recuperated from an ankle operation last summer, she returned as the focus of a ‘curated’ evening in the intimate environment of the Linbury Theatre. First came a revival of a modernist classic: Martha Graham’s Errand into the Maze dates from

Those of a violently masochistic disposition would have heartily enjoyed the Saturday matinée of the Strictly Come Dancing: Live Tour at the Utilita Arena, Birmingham. Talent loses out to glitter and hype, as shrieking vulgarity envelops all What deliciously perverse pleasure was to be drawn on this bleakly cold afternoon from the vast, snaking queues, the blared injunctions from the Tannoy, the drear concrete ambience, the over-priced merchandise tat and the chaos of the ultra-processed catering outlets – not to mention the £15 charge for leaving an empty backpack in the cloakroom. And then there was the show. How sad that what started off 20 years ago as a timely

Since its première in Paris in 1841, Giselle has weathered a bumpy ride. For St Petersburg in 1884, Petipa gave Coralli and Perrot’s original choreography the once-over and Fokine grafted on further innovations when Diaghilev brought the ballet to London in 1911. Despite casts led by Pavlova, Karsavina and Nijinsky, it bombed here with critics and audiences, who considered its archetypal Victorian plot of the innocent village maiden betrayed by the local squire prissy and musty. Only a generation later, when the likes of Markova and Ulanova assumed the title role, did the scenario’s mythic simplicity find new life, albeit in versions that departed quite radically from the primary text.

Ruination begins with an ironic prologue in which a choric figure warns the audience that what follows makes unlikely matter for the festive season: look elsewhere if you’re after light entertainment, he says, because this is going to shake you up a bit. And it does. This is genre-defying physical theatre, ‘devised’ by Ben Duke, in which spoken text is combined with episodes of dance and interludes of song, playfully satirical in tone and uprooted from any boundaries of realism or historical period. Although it is somewhat pretentious, I pretty much loved it The choric figure is Hades, and his realm of death is the setting. Jason and Medea have

Pantomime season is upon us, and unless your taste in colour runs no further than Smarties, there is no more magnificent spectacle on offer than Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker – performed so many hundred times since its première in 1990 that two years ago it disintegrated and required reconstruction. Its scenery and costumes are the work of John Macfarlane, a softly spoken Glaswegian who is ranked worldwide as one of the great stage designers of his generation. They demonstrate in abundance a quality that characterises all his work: a brooding chiaroscuro, in which nightmarishly surreal flickers of ruin and decay are shot through with gorgeous sensuality. There

I think I’m through with Hofesh Shechter, and that’s a pity, because earlier work of his such as Political Mother thrilled me with its unedited passion and energy. But after several duds and misfires, I feel that with Theatre of Dreams he’s run out of ideas and hit a dead end. The title suggests what’s gone wrong: labelling something Theatre of Dreams gives you licence to go crazy and do what the hell you like, without any purpose or structure, rhyme or reason. And that’s what has happened here. Over 90 uninterrupted minutes, curtains close and open to reveal a hundred or so snapshot tableaux of 13 dancers doing nothing

Ballet companies have become dismally timid about exploring their 20th-century heritage: everything nowadays must be either box-fresh new or a fairy-tale classic, which seems to me a recipe for an unbalanced diet. So I’m pleased that under the directorship of Federico Bonelli, Northern Ballet is pluckily dusting off neglected treasures of the recent past. Last year brought Hans van Manen’s exquisite Adagio Hammerklavier (1973) back to life; this year, it’s the turn of Rudi van Dantzig’s setting of Strauss’s Four Last Songs (1977), danced to the recording made by Gundula Janowitz and Herbert von Karajan. A dark angelic figure, hungry for some grim reaping, hovers over four youthful couples in

On 14 March 2020 I was at Leeds Grand Theatre for the première of Northern Ballet’s Geisha. The curtains swung open on fishermen flinging out their nets, geisha, samurai, 19th-century Japanese village folk, followed by the sudden appearance of American sailors. It was in essence a Japanese Giselle: the tale of a geisha, spurned by her American lover, who dies of grief, and whose restless spirit returns from the grave. Far from being offended, the Japanese Embassy offered their official imprimatur It was a unique production. Many of the dancers at Northern Ballet are Japanese, Chinese or Korean and this was an east Asian story. The ballet was created by

Recent acquisition of some insanely expensive hearing aids aimed at helping me out in cacophonous restaurants has set me thinking about the extent that modern life allows us to filter our intake of noise. This is big business. As sirens wail and Marvel blockbusters and rock concerts crash through legal decibel levels, controlling sound levels has become an increasingly sophisticated operation, abetted by everything from silicone pastilles and the volume-control knob to the wireless earbud. The National Theatre has virtually given up on ‘natural’ sound Concert halls and opera houses remain havens of what one might call ‘natural’ acoustics, places where the alchemy of balancing convex and concave surfaces with

There’s sound thinking behind this summer’s resuscitation of London City Ballet – a medium-scale touring company popular in the 1980s that went bust in 1996. Given that larger institutions operating outside London such as Northern Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet are hamstrung by ever-tightening budgets that leave them increasingly risk-averse, there’s a crying need for something lighter on its feet and more adventurous in its repertory. This is what the new-form LCB under the direction of Christopher Marney sets out to provide, presenting new work alongside forays into the back catalogue. If you aren’t thrilled by the finale of A Chorus Line, then there’s no hope for you For LCB’s

Over this summer you can see Swan Lake performed at the Royal Opera House by the Royal Ballet; at the Coliseum by a company from Georgia; at Sadler’s Wells by Chinese acrobats; and at the Royal Albert Hall by English National Ballet. It is expected therefore to attract audiences of Taylor Swiftian magnitude – well in excess of 100,000, by my very rough reckoning. And should you dread autumnal withdrawal symptoms, then fear not: a film of Matthew Bourne’s version will be shown in cinemas in September, prior to a national live tour starting in November and continuing until May, including a two-month season at Sadler’s Wells over Christmas. There

I encountered Frederick Ashton at a dinner party shortly before he died in 1988. Frail and anxious, he clutched my arm and demanded to know which of his creations I thought would survive him. I duly reeled off some titles, but felt that any opinion I expressed would have disappointed him. In public, he professed to care not a fig for posterity, but he evidently did, and his will set out thoughtful arrangements parcelling ownership of his works out to various trusted colleagues, with the bulk passing to his nephew, the Royal Ballet’s administrative director Anthony Russell-Roberts. How exhilarating to be reminded of Ashton’s remarkable range, and of choreography so

There’s no escaping Christopher Wheeldon – a modest, amiable fellow from Yeovil of whom anyone’s mum would be proud. Reaching outside the ballet bubble, his stagings of An American in Paris and the Michael Jackson musical have wowed the West End, Broadway and beyond. My guess is that his take on Oscar Wilde, to be premiered in Australia later this year, will soon travel north, too. Next season the Royal Ballet will revive his box-office smash Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as well as a programme drawn from his plentiful short pieces. Two summers ago, he presented us with an adaptation of the novel Like Water for Chocolate (not so tasty).

In 2010, when his thrillingly edgy and angry Political Mother delivered modern dance a winding punch right where it hurt, I had high hopes for Hofesh Shechter. Here was an outsider with the courage to make his own rules and engage dance with real-world issues (he had served a traumatising period in the Israeli army) rather than blindly following the fashionable goddess Pina Bausch down the rabbit hole of postmodern irony. He wasn’t interested in playing games. But success has taken his edge off and what has followed has largely been disappointing. Trapped by a limited choreographic vocabulary, Shechter has repeated himself, relying too hard on the brute effect of