Dance

Adapting ballets out of plot-heavy novels set in fantasy locations and populated with multiple characters is a rubbish idea. The profound truth of such a proposal is forcefully borne out by the wretched muddle of Wayne McGregor’s MaddAddam, an over-inflated farrago drawn from a triptych of visionary fictions by Margaret Atwood. McGregor – hugely talented and energetic as he is – needs to calm down and slow down and think small Where to start? Apocalyptic themes – political, environmental and ‘societal’ – are evoked in images and spoken narration without McGregor having any means in his hyperactive choreographic vocabulary to translate them meaningfully into dance. Only those who are already

After opening its 2024/5 season with a run of Christopher Wheeldon’s candy-coloured, kiddie-friendly Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Royal Ballet gets down to business with a demanding but exhilarating programme of new work. Newish, to be accurate; the evening’s only previously unseen piece is Joseph Toonga’s Dusk. Crystal Pite’s The Statement is eight years old and was previously seen at Covent Garden in 2021; Kyle Abraham’s The Weathering followed a year later; and Pam Tanowitz’s Or Forevermore has developed out of a duet that originated during the pandemic. Dusk and The Weathering call for little comment. Both are well-crafted and safely generic, elegiac in mood and unassertive in theme. Dusk

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

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

As graduation ceremonies go, the Royal Ballet School’s annual matinée ranks among the most spectacular. It takes place at the Royal Opera House in front of an adoring parental audience, and although it serves primarily as a showcase for those passing out into the profession, it also contains spots for all 250 or so pupils, ranging in age from 11 to 19 and globally recruited, culminating in a glorious parade (called the défilé) of the entire establishment, drilled with a precision that reminds one of ballet’s miliary roots. This year Christopher Powney, the school’s artistic director for the past decade, hands over to Iain Mackay, formerly a principal at Birmingham

To defend my case that Frederick Ashton ought to be acknowledged as one of the major artistic geniuses of the last century, I would adduce three crucial pieces of evidence, garnered from the Royal Ballet’s ‘Ashton Celebrated’ festival at Covent Garden this month. Oberon and Titania’s love is an open contest between two unyielding wills: it can’t be danced gently The first is ‘Les Rendezvous’, dating from 1933 and one of his earliest enduring creations. Set in a Victorian park in which some harmless young people meet to flirt and circulate, it provides an object lesson in how to make something supremely but unaffectedly stylish out of a wafer-thin premise.

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

Samuel Beckett was notoriously reluctant to let people muck about with his work, so it’s somewhat surprising to learn that he licensed and approved Maguy Marin’s May B. This 90-minute ‘dance theatre’ fantasia may play on vaguely Beckettian themes but in no way is it faithful to his texts or instructions – in some respects it even subverts them. Yet it has enjoyed huge success all over Europe since its première in 1982, and finally reached Britain last week. A long wait, for something that turns out to be very odd indeed. Ten dancers of all shapes and sizes in grotesque make-up and dressed in chalky, tatty underclothes stand immobile

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

Carmen and Frankenstein are without a doubt two of the most over-worked tropes in our culture, the myths of the evasively seductive gypsy and the human monster machine being lazily recycled and plundered and vulgarised in various forms to the point at which their authentic primal power has been altogether deflated. So it was with a heavy sigh that I anticipated their two latest danced iterations. No surprises were likely, and none were delivered. It’s not bad, it’s just not good enough – yet another retread of familiar material The list of choreographers – Roland Petit, Alberto Alonso, John Cranko, Mats Ek, Antonio Gades, Matthew Bourne, Carlos Acosta – who

My feelings about the genius of Kenneth MacMillan have always been volatile, but in the course of the Royal Ballet’s current triple bill, they veered even more wildly than usual between uncomplicated delight, awed reverence and embarrassment. A revival of his early Danses Concertantes, firing off Stravinsky at his most effervescent and designed with exuberantly colourful Festival-of-Britain jazziness by Nicholas Georgiadis, provided half an hour of pure joy. Stylistically an exercise in the neoclassicism that dominated the postwar era, it’s witty, chic and upbeat, exploring sharp angles rather than smooth curves and lyrical lines. MacMillan’s choreographic invention is profligate, with little twists and unexpected turns, all infused with an infectious

Not being an aficionado of the heavy-metal genre, I snootily suspected that I would rather be standing in the rain flogging the Big Issue than suffer the racket that goes by the name of Black Sabbath. The noise, my dear, and the people! How could they? So I approached Birmingham Royal Ballet’s attempt to dance to its shenanigans armed with earplugs and gritted teeth. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected: in fact, it erred towards the polite and tasteful, and I wondered if a crowd largely consisting of hairy and leathery old rockers – some of them possibly anticipating satanic rituals or heads being bitten off chickens –

Aaron S. Watkin, an affable bearded Canadian, is the new artistic director of English National Ballet. He arrives from Dresden, where he ran a similarly scaled company comfortably subsidised by public funds. Doubtless, he finds what the Arts Council gives ENB meagre to the point of stingy. One may wonder, therefore, what the attraction is, but he certainly inherits from Tamara Rojo a solid organisation and a fine body of dancers, particularly strong on the male side. His inaugural piece of programming is striking but not altogether successful. It starts gloriously with Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, an essay in his grand tsarist style, set to some noble music by Tchaikovsky,

The Red Shoes, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 film about a ballet and its company, is 75 this month, and its birthday is being marked with great fanfare. From October to December, the BFI is putting on a major retrospective of the films of Powell and Pressburger, with an accompanying exhibition and nationwide screenings of The Red Shoes itself. A companion book to The Red Shoes by Pamela Hutchinson – stuffed with insight and background – is being published, as well as a lavish volume, The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger, complete with pictures and essays (almost love letters) about the late filmmakers from artists such as Tilda Swinton

In 2015 Carlos Acosta announced his retirement from the Royal Ballet and the classical repertory. It seemed like the right moment; he was 42 and, truth to tell, some of us could detect a slight waning of his prowess and physique. Time to move on: since then, he has done great work in his native Cuba and is currently a venturesome artistic director of Birmingham Royal Ballet. He is a rather wonderful person. Eight years after his withdrawal from Covent Garden, however, he has made a brief return – addressing an itch, he says, that had to be scratched. The house sold out for five nights running and the reception

Through several phases of the culture wars, ballet has served as a canary in the coal mine, its intense and exposed physicality highlighting all the issues surrounding sexuality, gender and power that have currently become our unhealthily narcissistic preoccupation. Perhaps the warnings started with the phenomenon of Vaslav Nijinsky. Against the defined masculinity and femininity of the Edwardian era, he stood out as seductively androgynous and effeminate as well as staggeringly charismatic – a godlike hero unashamed to represent le spectre de la rose. Bloomsbury ogled, and rumours about his pederastic relationship with his patron Serge Diaghilev circulated scandalously. Fonteyn said that if people knew what she endured only those