English National Ballet
Exhilarating – but also exhausting: ENB’s The Forsythe Programme reviewed
The first time I saw the work of Trajal Harrell I stomped out in a huff muttering about the waste…
A jewel in the English National Ballet’s crown: Giselle reviewed
Since its première in Paris in 1841, Giselle has weathered a bumpy ride. For St Petersburg in 1884, Petipa gave…
Expressive and eloquent: Northern Ballet’s Three Short Ballets reviewed
Ballet companies have become dismally timid about exploring their 20th-century heritage: everything nowadays must be either box-fresh new or a…
Choreographers! Enough with the reworkings of Carmen and Frankenstein!
Carmen and Frankenstein are without a doubt two of the most over-worked tropes in our culture, the myths of the…
Dancing feat
Aaron S. Watkin, an affable bearded Canadian, is the new artistic director of English National Ballet. He arrives from Dresden,…
Tornado Tamara
One wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of Tamara Rojo. The most fearsome figure on the British dance…
All that pizazz
Velvet waistcoats, technicolour tulle and some very spangly harem pants — English National Ballet’s atelier must have been mighty busy…
From Russia with love
The enduring appeal of The Nutcracker. The ballet wasn’t always considered quite such a box of delights
Great expectations
The OED defines ‘gala’ as ‘a festive occasion’. In the ballet world this usually translates as a handful of stars,…
Lockdown unlocked
The choreographers called on to get the nation’s dancers back on to the stage have as much to say about…
Bar-room ballet
Thank God for the fast-forward button. Sadler’s Wells had planned a tentative return to live performance last month but the…
Electrifying: English National Ballet’s She Persisted reviewed
‘Where was the Kahlo brow?’ asked my guest in the first interval of English National Ballet’s She Persisted, a triple…
One nasty moment aside, the ENB’s Manon is superlative
If you like the BBC’s Les Misérables, you’ll love English National Ballet’s Manon. Manon, in Kenneth MacMillan’s telling, is The…
Why does the English National Ballet bother taking Manon to the provinces?
Like it or not, provincial ballet audiences love a story they can hum and any director planning to tour a…
ENB’s La Sylphide resembles a lock-in at a Royal Mile souvenir shop
Gurn loves Effy, Effy is engaged to James but James is away with the fairies: a recipe for love tragedy.…
On the money
The Big Short is a drama about the American financial collapse of 2008. It talks you through sub-prime mortgages, tranches,…
Fighting talk
If there’s one thing scarcer than hen’s teeth in serious choreography nowadays, it’s a light heart. When was the last…
50 shades of beige
My moment of the week was stumbling into the shocking, fantastical Cabinet of Curiosities in the Alexander McQueen show at…
Let the wrong one in
There’s been heated disagreement over the past week about what’s right and wrong. Is the rocket-propelled ex-Bolshoi enfant terrible Ivan…
Won’t some other quango come to the rescue of poor Sally Morgan?
Can someone please explain to me why the BBC newsreaders were not wearing black armbands last weekend when reporting the…
Entertaining romp
Bold decisions are at the core of great artistic directorship. And Tamara Rojo, the ballet star leading English National Ballet,…
