Louise Levene

Man buys girl, man loses girl. Ballet directors are always on the hunt for fresh stories, and La Strada’s simple-seeming narrative is a natural fit for dance drama. Fellini’s 1954 film masterpiece is the next venture for former Royal Ballet star Alina Cojocaru with ACWorkroom, the production company she founded in 2019. Her first full-length commission, it has its world premiere at Sadler’s Wells later this month. The tragic scenario has the spare moral clarity of the silent era, with two meaty…

Poor Giselle. Doomed from the moment she opens her cottage door to the handsome swine in the neighbouring hovel. By the time she discovers that he is an aristocrat in disguise, her weak heart is fatally broken . . . but she rises from the grave to save him from the vengeful wilis, the ghosts of girls who died before their wedding day, who have every intention of dancing him to death. English National Ballet is currently staging a revival of its 1971 Giselle. Meticulously researched by Mary Skea…

A stimulating Sunday afternoon at the old fireworks factory at Woolwich Arsenal in south-east London, where New Movement Collective were presenting Les Noces — The Departure, an imaginative response to Diaghilev’s enduring Ballets Russes masterpiece. The original Les Noces, first danced in Paris in 1923, boasted a score by Igor Stravinsky, choreography by Bronislava Nijinska (sister of) and sets and costumes by Russian cubo-futurist Natalia Goncharova — Gesamtkunstwerk doesn’t begin to cover it…

A tart, a pimp, a ponce and a sugar daddy. The key players in Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel Manon Lescaut are an ugly bunch, but Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet contextualises their many sins, creating flawed characters of surprising depth. The Royal Ballet’s 50th anniversary revival opened last week and was well danced and vividly played by a company on fine form. Nicholas Georgiadis’s rags-and-riches designs have worn extraordinarily well, illustrating the vast gulf between high and low life in pre-re…

Was it something we said? After an absence of 16 years, New York City Ballet has finally returned to London. Director Jonathan Stafford, clearly keen to shift the focus from the core repertoire by founder George Balanchine, has selected a programme featuring new(ish) work by Pam Tanowitz, Kyle Abraham and Justin Peck, NYCB’s resident choreographer. Peck’s 2020 Rotunda, set to a Nico Muhly commission played live by the Britten Sinfonia, makes a blandly palate-cleansing opener. Twelve superb danc…

When the choreographer John Cranko died at the age of only 45, his colleague, rival and friend Kenneth MacMillan immortalised him with Requiem, one of his loveliest, most poignant works, which supplies the soaring finale for the Royal Ballet’s meaty new MacMillan retrospective. Requiem was premiered by Cranko’s Stuttgart company in 1976, the hidebound board of the Royal Opera House having vetoed MacMillan’s use of Gabriel Fauré’s sacred score. It was an instant classic, finally entering the Roy…

Lashings of sex and violence, a magnificent score and plenty of fruity local colour, Carmen has been steaming up the dance stage since 1949 when Roland Petit created the definitive one-act ballet version for his wife Zizi Jeanmaire. Petit’s modern masterpiece was acquired by English National Ballet during the directorship of Wayne Eagling in 2011 but the company’s current head, Aaron Watkin, has gone shopping for another: the 2015 full-evening version by Swedish dancemaker Johan Inger set to the…

May-December romance: a certain frisson is guaranteed; a happy ending is unlikely, but such transgressive liaisons are ideal material for dance drama. Mehek, devised and performed by Aakash Odedra and Kathak virtuoso Aditi Mangaldas, had its London premiere at Sadler’s Wells on Friday: handsomely staged, powerfully danced. Our story begins with Odedra seated downstage in a narrow shaft of light which he catches in a jagged fragment of mirror and relays around the auditorium. One by one, more ra…

The company’s mixture of camp satire and bravura technique arrived in Yokohama to loud applause

Danced with skill and staged with flair at London’s Sadler’s Wells, the choreographer’s piece lacks resolution