#contemporary-dance

#contemporary-dance

Being called the best assumes lightning will strike twice, on schedule, and then strike again. I think that's life at the San Francisco Ballet. I heard about many bests recently at its 93rd opening gala. Everywhere I looked, people chattered in polite gossip, and a new room waited for me to find reasons to linger, from macarons and photo stations; or I was catching up with my favorite performer while waiting in line for cocktails.

Reading this description, my eyes hung on the charged word "rubble." I learned from White Bird's Executive Director Graham Cole during his curtain speech that I could expect this story to relate to themes of nostalgia and relationship - an interpersonal and psychological "rubble" of sorts, albeit with contemporary geopolitical connotations of war, genocide, and displacement that I found hard to shake.

Now in his mid-40s, Nico Muhly is a prolific and much in-demand composer of works for a wide range of settings from orchestral to choral music, with scores for the stage and sacred compositions. His music wouldn't be considered 'easy', but when tackled by the brilliantly inventive Irish dance-theatre maker Michael Keegan-Dolan, it makes for a superb spectacle. Keegan-Dolan's The Only Tune, which brings Marking Time to a thrilling end,

NW Dance Project presented Carmen+ on October 24 and 25 at the Newmark Theatre in downtown Portland. The company, led by Artistic Director Sarah Slipper and Executive Director Scott Lewis, danced a world premiere, followed by the return of its 2017 hit Carmen. As Slipper and Lewis took to the stage to thank the audience and introduce the evening, an excited hush fell over the crowd.

Easy to fool the eye, then, but is it equally easy to keep it alert and interested? That's what I asked myself as I sat in a sadly half-empty Sadler's Wells East, fighting a wave of somnolence partly induced by Elon Höglund's music, a monotonous, repetitive combination of muffled beats and gurgling. Much of what was happening before my eyes, if not exactly breakin' or street dance as we know it, was ingenious enough:

Berlin's avant-garde artistic scene is forever enriched by the mesmerising performance work, DUNST, crafted by the dynamic duo Marie Zechiel and Elodie Carstensen. The piece premiered at the esteemed LOST Art Festival 2025. This stunning piece transports us into a realm where body, space, and atmosphere converge in an unforgettable experience. Set against the backdrop of Guillaume Cousin's monumental smoke-ring installation within the industrial expanse of the Kolbenhutte, DUNST unfolds a tapestry of movement that captivates the senses.

At the core of Tate Modern's exhibition Theatre Picasso, opening this week, is a painting that Picasso esteemed more highly even than Guernica (1937). Picasso told Roland Penrose that he much preferred The Three Dancers (1925) to his anti-fascist opus, because it is "a real painting-a painting in itself without any outside considerations". Tate is marking the painting's 100th anniversary with a show that includes its entire Picasso collection as well as major loans, but with a fresh perspective courtesy of its staging by the artist Wu Tsang and the writer and curator Enrique Fuenteblanca. By inviting contributions from contemporary dancers and choreographers, the duo will open up fresh interpretations of a masterpiece that has already proved inexhaustibly fascinating.

Candle-lit circular corridors dotted with quirky props, distressed plaster walls and surely the most stylish bar in London add to the very special atmosphere of its 195-seater auditorium raked so that every sight line is unimpeded, and a smaller studio space. Taken together, all this creates the perfect setting for veteran dancer/choreographer Russell Maliphant's latest strand of work: small-scale, intense, intimate.

Dance Umbrella bills itself as a festival of all things dance. Now just three years shy of its half-century, over the years it has brought to London a mind-blowing variety of dance makers and performers, both established and untested, national and international. And it never ceases to evolve. Under the directorship (2013-2021) of the late, lamented Emma Gladstone, it unapologetically stretched its boundaries to become more umbrella than dance.

With acrobatic finesse, the figures in Artez's large-scale murals interpret the boundaries of the walls themselves through contemporary dance and moments of repose.

The new ballet, Quadrophenia, offers a fresh orchestral lens to Pete Townshend's timeless rock opera, enhancing its emotional depth and narrative richness.

When I first came into contact with hip hop ... it was a very empowering time and moment,... at the age of 26 after my classical training, I felt compelled to reach back and connect to that part of me I left behind in Los Angeles.