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The Sleeping Beauty and The Rite of Spring | Dance review

In Act One of The Sleeping Beauty, shortly after her first entrance, the ballerina dancing Princess Aurora faces one of the hardest tests in the classical canon. Presented with four suitors, she dances with each in turn in a passage known as the Rose ...

From LUKE JENNINGS, Guardian Unlimited,  21 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Royal Ballet

Birmingham Royal Ballet: Quantum Leaps, National Dance Company Wales | Dance review

How would David Bintley's career have developed if he hadn't become director of Birmingham Royal Ballet in 1995? By then, he had choreographed "Still Life" at the Penguin Café and Tombeaux, the latter seen by many as his finest work. The story-ballets ...

From LUKE JENNINGS, Guardian Unlimited,  14 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Royal Ballet,  William Forsythe,  Roy Campbell

The Devil Is a Gentleman by Phil Baker | Book review

Bestselling author Dennis Wheatley came to resemble one of his own characters. In 1966, a young editor named Giles Gordon joined Hutchinson and was handed the latest Dennis Wheatley manuscript. Some streak of devilry made Gordon remove the title page ...

From LUKE JENNINGS, Guardian Unlimited,  7 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Eric Gordon,  MI5,  Ian Fleming,  James Bond

Agon, Sphinx, Limen/ Mayerling | Dance review

‘Thrilling, strange and sad’: Limen at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: Bill Cooper Ballet makes no ethnic distinctions. We accept without question a Caribbean Romeo or an Asian Juliet. George Balanchine's abstract work Agon, however, has remained ...

From LUKE JENNINGS, Guardian Unlimited,  7 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Royal Ballet,  George Balanchine,  Arthur Mitchell,  Wayne McGregor,  Zandra Rhodes

Mark Morris Dance Group | Dance review

Watching the men of the in V, I'm reminded of Fotherington-Thomas in Geoffrey Willans's Down With Skool. According to Molesworth, the book's spelling-challenged narrator, Fotherington-Thomas is "uterly wet and a sissy" and is given to saying: "Hullo ...

From LUKE JENNINGS, Guardian Unlimited,  31 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Mark Morris,  Dido (musician),  Charles Ives,  Elisa (musician),  Bob Wills

Diaghilev: A Life by Sjeng Scheijen

In August 1929, the impresario Sergey Diaghilev died, broke and exhausted, in the Grand Hotel in Venice. He had long been convinced that he would end his days in the city where, as he once wrote to his stepmother: "One can't live – one can only be." In ...

From LUKE JENNINGS, Guardian Unlimited,  24 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Ballets Russes,  Vaslav Nijinsky,  Anna Pavlova

The Wheeldon Company in Morphoses | Dance review

A scene from Commedia, from Morphoses by the Wheeldon Company at Sadler's Wells. Photograph: Tristram Kenton Christopher Wheeldon launched his ballet company Morphoses in 2007, when he was resident choreographer with New York City Ballet. It was a ...

From LUKE JENNINGS, Guardian Unlimited,  24 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Christopher Wheeldon,  New York City Ballet,  Frederick Ashton,  Kenneth MacMillan,  George Balanchine

In the Spirit of Diaghilev | Dance review

When Sadler's Wells director Alastair Spalding commissioned four of his associate choreographers to create danceworks "in the spirit of Diaghilev" to celebrate the centenary of the Ballets Russes, the results were always likely to be diverse. The brief ...

From LUKE JENNINGS, Guardian Unlimited,  17 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Ballets Russes,  Jean Cocteau,  Cartier,  Karl Lagerfeld,  Hussein Chalayan

MacMillan's Mayerling | Dance review

A scene from Mayerling by the Royal Ballet. Photograph: Tristram Kenton The choreographer Kenneth MacMillan would have been 80 this year had he not died backstage during a performance of Mayerling in 1992. Created in 1978, the ballet was MacMillan's ...

From LUKE JENNINGS, Guardian Unlimited,  10 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Kenneth MacMillan

The Land of Yes and the Land of No

There's an absence at the heart of contemporary dance in this country. An elephant missing from the room whose name is subject matter. Choreographic craft skills are everywhere in evidence; technical standards of performance are more beguiling with ...

From LUKE JENNINGS, Guardian Unlimited,  3 Oct 2009

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