A little over thirty years ago, in between Berlioz surprising music interspersed with bombing and the sound of machine guns, an unconventional Friar Lawrence cried out to Jorge Donn and Hitomi Asakawa: “Make love, not war!” Today, Gil Roman, who…
Noism Company Niigata is the only company in Japan that is a resident company of a public theater. The artistic director Kanamori Jo, has worked with prominent international dance companies like Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT). His choreography is based not…
Early 1979At John Neumeier‘s request, I am thinking about a piece destined for the Hamburg Ballet. I choose Vivaldi, a misunderstood musician, particularly in his religious music. The musical montage is done. I hesitate between two titles: Light or Caro…
Bolt, Shostakovich’s forbidden ballet which was never performed after its premiere in 1931, in a new scenic version by Alexei Ratmansky. Shostakovich composed a caustically humourous ballet, blending popular tunes, serious music, circus music, waltzes, marches, tangos. He had imagined…
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s one-woman show filmed live in London’s West End by the National Theatre. Written and performed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Killing Eve) and directed by Vicky Jones, Fleabag is a rip-roaring look at some sort of woman living her…
Gene Kelly‘s pioneering choreography and much-loved style influenced a generation of dance-makers, and we honour his creative legacy with this playful new production. Set to Gershwin’s effortlessly cool Concerto in F, with extracts from Chopin, recorded by the Scottish Ballet…
Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart lead the cast in this glorious revival of Harold Pinter’s comic classic. One summer’s evening, two ageing writers, Hirst and Spooner, meet in a Hampstead pub and continue their drinking into the night at Hirst’s…
I quite liked “dear shadows”…I could also have called it “The Flying Fishing Hooks”, “The House of Rains”, or a few other words that also belonged to the show… The struggle between “the fish hooks” and “the umbrellas” was particularly…
The German choreographer Sasha Waltz‘s poignant version of the celebrated legend of the “star‑crossed” lovers from Verona captures all the romanticism of Berlioz’s symphonic poem. The monochrome sobriety of the costumes and sets accentuates the dramatic intensity of the work…
Jiří Kylián has already made many masterpieces, one of them the fascinating Sleepless, a creation for six young dancers in which the set plays an important part. It has a wall behind which dancers – or sometimes just parts of…
