Eran Bugge and Michael Trusnovec in Esplanade

Eran Bugge and Michael Trusnovec in Esplanade, Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance, March 2017. - For all Esplanade’s wit and charm, it is suffused with yearning.  The second movement is an elegiac lament and the fourth aches with tenderness, opening with two couples, each woman cradled in the arms of their partner.  Even in the brisk movements, dancers lightly touch one another, as if to say “play with me, please.”  Desire borders on devotion for both sexes: a man supine on the ground, props a woman up on his stomach, and promenades her like a music box ballerina. - NégyArt (Szingy Books) 

Constance Devernay and Andrew Peasgood

Constance Devernay and Andrew Peasgood in Kenneth MacMillan’s The Fairy’s Kiss, Scottish Ballet, October 2017. - MacMillan’s emotionally charged pas de deux is never far away. It might be a fanciful story, but these are real characters on stage and they touch us. The first night cast, of Constance Devernay as the Fairy, Andrew Peasgood as the Young Man and Bethany Kingsley-Garner as the Fiancée, were particularly impressive dramatically and gave a lucid account of often difficult movement. - NégyArt (Szingy Books)

Kayla-Maree Tarantolo in Each Other

Kayla-Maree Tarantolo in Each Other, Scottish Ballet, April 2017 - Contemporary choreographers understand you can do amazing things with a corps de ballet. As if to make the point Each Other ends with a long solo by artist Kayla-Maree Tarantolo who only joined the company last year. It’s a touching and sometimes funny display, as a girl/young woman looks for more than the pain and mayhem we’ve witnessed... - Szingy Books (Szigetingy Gallery) 

Olga Smirnova and Semyon Chudin

Olga Smirnova and Semyon Chudin in La Belle, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo - As in Perrault’s tale, the princess awakens with the Prince’s presence and not with the kiss, which follows their opening “conversation”; but once their lips connect, they remain locked for a large part of the ensuing duet, which, together with Smirnova’s floating arms and the alluring sentiment of Maillot’s flowing choreography, invests the duet with an absorbing tenderness, as the Prince leads La Belle towards the screen that had earlier held the imagery of his dreams.

 

Tamara Rojo in Akram Khan’s Giselle

Tamara Rojo in Akram Khan’s Giselle, English National Ballet, November 2016. Khan has reimagined the original 1841 libretto while retaining its universal themes of love and betrayal, madness and revenge. Tamara Rojo is readily identifiable as Giselle because she is a natural magnet for attention, beautiful and spirited.

 

Edit Domoszlai

Edit Domoszlai in Hydrargyrum, Rambert, November 2016. - The audience was transported to the fluid potential of group work in Patricia Okenwa’s Hydrargyrum, which is an esoteric and archaic name for mercury. Six dancers were clothed in hooded costumes that gave them a genderless anonymity.

Emma Maguire in Monotones I

Emma Maguire in Monotones I, Royal Ballet, 2013 (Photograph by Bill Cooper / ROH) - The green trio, Monotones I, is gender neutral. The three figures execute the same academic steps in unison, their limbs at the same angles. One of the two women is Emma Maguire. The choreography is based on pacing and lunging to the pulse of Satie’s Trois Gnossiennes, torsos curving as shoulders twist in épaulement. Exacting and exposed, Montonones I was immaculately danced…

Two Ballet Dancers

Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917) - Two Ballet Dancers, c.1879 (Pastel and gouache on paper. Shelburne Museum, Vermont) - Degas shows two dancers in an abrupt, expressive design. The young dancers are spent and the one on the left massages her foot indicating discomfort. They are far removed from the magic illusion of the stage and performance that many expected of Degas…

Scottish Ballet Principal Dancer Sophie Martin

Sophie Martin for David Dawson’s brand new Swan Lake. Scottish Ballet… World premiere in spring 2016 - Photograph by David Eustace