Reviews

In an admirable move, the Vienna State Ballet dedicated its latest triple bill to those who rarely get the limelight: the corps de ballet.

DEKKADANCERS is a major dance company, significantly influencing the development of contemporary dance and dance theatre and undoubtedly the taste of the audience in a wider context. 

Opera Ballet Vlaanderen’s 23/24 season commenced with a double bill combining a première of Richard Siegal’s brave but inaccessible New Ballet mécanique with the critically acclaimed showstopper Half Life by Sharon Eyal. 

In an ever more secular and indulgent world, we often forget about the moral values that our society was built on. Stuttgart’s second biggest dance company asks us to remind ourselves of these values, as well as to examine their relevance in our modern lives.

What does it mean to be radical today? At the vanguard of the Belgian contemporary dance scene, STUK might be as good a place as any to check the temperature. 

One of the leading representatives of European Expressionism, Egon Schiele (1890-1918), who, together with Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, established a new era of painting in Vienna, died more than a century ago at the age of 28.

Cirque du Soleil, Canada's world-famous, most commercially successful circus, has returned to its original work after a long pandemic hiatus. In Montreal, they are currently presenting their newest show called Echo.

On the evenings of the 29th and 30th June at the Montpellier Danse Festival, Anne Martin, Pina Bausch Dance Company soloist from 1979 to 1991 and later a teacher at CNSMD in Lyon, presented Umwandlung – her first solo dance piece at the tender age of 68.

As its last première of this spring season, Staatsballett Berlin presented a Stravinsky double-bill, featuring two of the composer’s masterpieces, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, under the choreographic signatures of Marco Goecke and Pina Bausch.

In its third week, the TANEC PRAHA festival presented two personalities of contemporary European choreography: the Belgian Jan Martens and the Irish Oona Doherty. 

It has become almost a tradition that the Losers Cirque Company, in the late spring days, with a bridge to the holidays, settled next to the BRAVO! Theatre in the area of the Convent of St Agnes of Bohemia in Prague's František district.

Sasha Waltz's pieces are touring the world from Berlin, her current home base. The last visit to the Czech Republic by this petite lady, who recently celebrated a significant anniversary in her life, was in 2015 when her Impromptus opened Tanec Praha festival.

The last premiere of this season for the Czech National Ballet in Prague was rather unexpectedly the romantic La Sylphide. Replacing the originally intended programme of George Balanchine's Who Cares? and Brahms - Schönberg Quartet. 

In the West, especially in the United States, programmes made entirely of George Balanchine's works are very common. In the Czech Republic, however, until this year no ballet company had ever staged a similarly composed evening. 

As Dancing Pina opens, a camera towers over a performer lying face down on a studio floor. Delicately inching her forearm along the ground, the dancer is scrutinized by Malou Airaudo, who intervenes with agitated intensity.