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Giannandrea Poesio rss

Dance: Hansel and Gretel

18 May 2013
Hansel and Gretel Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

As far as memory serves, in my 46 years of being both in and at the ballet I have encountered only seven ballet adaptations of the Grimm Brothers’ Hansel and… Read more

Mixed blessings

23 February 2013
Ashton Mixed Programme Royal Opera House
Two Cigarettes in the Dark Wuppertal Tanztheater Pina Bausch, Sadler’s Wells

Last week, Sergei Polunin’s powerful entrance in Marguerite and Armand was saluted with a wave of electrically charged silence: not a cough, not a sound, all eyes glued to the… Read more

From Russia with love

9 February 2013
Onegin Royal Opera House

If you want to know what’s so great about John Cranko’s choreography, look at the opening phrase of the final duet in Onegin (1965). The male dancer encircles the ballerina… Read more

Sleeping_Beauty_photo_by_Hugo_Glendinning

Bourne again

5 January 2013
Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty — A Gothic Romance Sadler’s Wells

While most theatres brace themselves for the annual invasion of prancing Nutcrackers and flying snowmen, Sadler’s Wells offers something that is mercifully not as sugary. Never-ending love and magic kisses… Read more

Captivating kaleidoscope

10 November 2012
Panorama Compagnie DCA, Sadler’s Wells Theatre
Royal Ballet Triple Bill Royal Opera House

When Philippe Decouflé first introduced the idea of sheer fun into the deadly serious business of postmodern dance-making, sceptics predicted that his comic strip and animated movie-like ideas would soon… Read more

Mixed bag

3 November 2012
Opposites Attract; Autumn Celebration! Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler’s Wells

Last year I raved about Birmingham Royal Ballet, their artistic drive, their freshness, their impeccable artistic eclecticism and, not least, their superb dancing. It was with such memories that I… Read more

Twin peaks

20 October 2012
Swan Lake Royal Opera House
Dance Umbrella Central St Martins

According to an old ballet commonplace, no one can beat the Russians when it comes to Swan Lake. Biased and historically inaccurate as this may be, the generalisation has a… Read more

American beauty

22 September 2012
San Francisco Ballet Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Tragically, the number of ballet directors who can orchestrate good programmes and good openings is dwindling these days. Helgi Tómasson, of San Francisco Ballet, is one of the few who… Read more

Grim realities

7 July 2012
Palermo Palermo|Triple Bill Sadler’s Wells|Royal Opera House

It was somewhat weird that Pina Bausch’s Palermo Palermo opened on the same night as Spain’s victory over Italy in the Euro 2012 final. After all, the Sicilian capital was… Read more

New world order

30 June 2012
World Cities 2012: Bamboo Blues; Der Fensterputzer Sadler’s Wells, Barbican

When World Cities 2012 — better known as the current Pina Bausch season — was first presented, questions were raised about the apparently random order of the various pieces. Yet… Read more

Tales of the city

16 June 2012
Viktor|Matthew Bourne’s Early Adventures|Ballo della Regina/La Sylphide Sadler’s Wells|Sadler’s Wells|Royal Opera House

Last Wednesday two of the three live pooches that appeared in Pina Bausch’s Viktor did onstage what most dogs do when in a state of arousal. The incident, which elicited… Read more

Unconditional love

2 June 2012

Not many dance-makers have had their art celebrated in major, award-winning feature films. Pina Bausch has. Wim Wenders’s 2011 Pina and Rainer Hoffmann’s/Anna Linsel’s 2010 Dancing Dreams offered unique insights… Read more

Me and my shadows

26 May 2012

Shadows and reflections have always triggered all sorts of fantasies. Theatre itself, in the words of many playwrights and theorists, is nothing but a game of shadows. Today, filmic and… Read more

Celebrating identity

5 May 2012

Last year, when I reviewed The Sum of Parts, the community-oriented piece produced by Connect, Sadler’s Wells Creative Learning department, I thought it wouldn’t be possible to do any better.… Read more

Magic chemistry

28 April 2012

Artifact was the first work that the groundbreaking dance-maker William Forsythe created in 1984 for the legendary Ballet Frankfurt. It is, therefore, pure ‘vintage’ Forsythe, even though it is as… Read more

Triple triumph

24 March 2012

Not many ballet companies convey young love as credibly as Birmingham Royal Ballet. And I am not talking about select soloists, but the company as a whole, for youth, freshness… Read more

Succulent pleasures

17 March 2012

It was about time a dance-maker exacted revenge on dance academics. In Alexander Ekman’s 2010 Cacti, a voiceover explains the alleged semantics of the choreography by resorting to theoretical clichés… Read more

On the ropes

3 March 2012

‘Aerial’ ballets were all the rage in late-Victorian London. It mattered little that they were more circus acts than actual ballets; their female stars, swinging from either a trapeze or… Read more

Star turn

11 February 2012

At first sight, the new Royal Ballet double bill might come across as an odd coupling: Ashton’s sparkling The Dream on one side, MacMillan’s metaphorically sombre Song of the Earth… Read more

Saved by the Bel

3 December 2011

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s and Jérôme Bel’s 3Abschied is the latest addition to a long and historically well-established series of choreographic works set to music by Gustav Mahler. There are… Read more

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