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Judith Mackrell reviews the Rambert Dance Company
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Hip-hop may have been born in the meanest streets of the Bronx, but in Paradis, performed by France's Compagnie Montalvo-Hervieu, the dance is rehabiliated to a celestial sweetness. Included within its wildly diverse cast of black, white, fat, thin, young, old, human and animal performers are a couple of break and body-popping virtuosos, and their dancing is so gracefully controlled that during their solos, the drastic glide-and-stall freneticism mutates to an angelic calm.
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When Richard Move first started performing his Martha Graham impersonations in the New York night club Mother, he was issued with numerous cease and desist notices by the Graham estate. Seeing his show at the Brick Lane Music Hall, it's easy to see why this 6ft 4in transvestite should so unnerve the official guardians of Graham's work. In his finely trodden line between homage and parody, Move captures a mix of grandeur and absurdity that's very close to how the late, great choreographer might have been. Move is a foot taller than his subject and can't recreate the unique shock of her dramatically ravaged face. But his make-up is perfect, and when he speaks he gets Graham's voice down to its deepest diva vowels and brittle girlish overtones. He also possesses her capacity to dominate the stage, and the sequences of Graham-inspired choreography performed by him and his four dancers are expertly mastered. Jane Dudley, who danced with Graham for many years, was heard to acknowlege at Sunday's show, "Well, they sure can move."
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Judith Mackrell reviews Cant/Mark Morris Dance Company at The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury
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Age may have nudged Irek Mukhamedov out of the biggest classical roles open to him but it certainly hasn't stopped him being a star. Even though the 39-year-old has been demoted to guest principal with the Royal Ballet, he can still give himself top billing with his own temporary company, performing at Sadler's Wells this week. Here he not only gets to pick his own roles, but also to choose the cast and repertoire - and it has to be said he does an impressive job.
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Michael Flatley may have hung up his dancing shoes, but the Irish dance phenomenon is still clackety-clacking its way unchecked around the globe, with two new shows coming to London. One is headed by Flatley's ex-partner Jean Butler and opens in November; the other is Gaelforce Dance, which was premiered at the Albert Hall on Thursday and will return for a longer run in the new year.
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Susan Marshall and Company
Edinburgh Festival Theatre
Rating: **
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William Tuckett's Turn Of The Screw
Sadler's Wells, LondonRating: ****
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If I were director of the Royal Ballet, Frederick Ashton's Ondine would be high on my list of vexed repertory. Simply, what's to be done with it? As one of the few full length ballets Ashton choreographed it has obvious historical interest and it contains moments of curious and beautiful poetry. Yet its style and concept are stuck in a no-man's-land between 50s period pieces and classic -which makes it baffling to many modern viewers.
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The Bolshoi's version of Raymonda wreaks interesting havoc with our idea of what a ballet classic is. The production may be based on Marius Petipa's 1898 work and contain extracts of the original choreography. It may also look the way people expect a 19th-century ballet to. Yet the provenance of this production is 1984, the year Yuri Grigorovich restaged it for the Bolshoi. And to British viewers, used to the Royal Ballet route by which Petipa has been handed down, the culture of the ballet is sometimes very foreign. It's not St Petersburg tradition as we know it.
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In the heyday of the Soviet Union the Bolshoi Ballet had a hotline to the Kremlin - which they were privileged to use when they required more funds. Even more importantly they had a hotline to the Soviet ethos which powered their artistic vision. When Yuri Grigorovich created his 1968 version of Spartacus the ballet was exuberantly in tune with official revolutionary poetics: a monumental work, whose story of an ardent slave pitted against a corrupt imperial power was cast in slabs of choreographic granite. Even in 1986 when I first saw the ballet, the dancers performed it as if they lived and died by it. Natalya Bessmertnova's Phrygia was an exquisite saint, Nina Semizorova's Aegina trailed sex like cheap perfume while Irek Mukhamedov performed Spartacus with a jaw dropping power that was as visionary as it was muscular.
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It's not that unusual for choreographers to invite musicians on to the stage, letting them occupy a discreet share of the dancers' space rather than consigning them to the pit. But in Diabelli, Twyla Tharp's setting of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, the relationship between her 10 dancers and pianist Nikolai Demidenko is special.
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For various reasons - notably the lack of a suitable venue - Jirí Kylián had never brought his company to London until this week. Given that he's about to resign as Nederlands Dans Theater's director (while continuing as choreographer), he'll never do so again. Yet Kylián is not unknown here. Several of his works have been performed by British companies or screened on television - in fact, the first time I ever saw his Symphony of Psalms (1978) it was on a tiny black-and-white television.