Isadora Now: A Triple Bill. Viviana Durante Company, Barbican Theatre, 29th February 2020 – Maggie Watson reviews

Vivian Durante Company’s homage to Isadora Duncan is a superbly staged production. As the audience assembles, waves of light wash across the stage like water on a beach, to the sound of the sea. The lights dim and our eyes are drawn to the bowl, upstage left, that crackles and sparks, becoming a crucible of flames. Dancers emerge from the darkness; horrible crawling creatures that explode into dance with demonic passion in Isadora Duncan’s Dance of the Furies to music by Gluck, restaged by Barbara Kane and Viviana Durante. The intense energy condensed into violent movement and gesture conveys the dramatic force of Duncan’s work, but the repetitive patterns and limited movement vocabulary suggest that her choreography relied on shock quality as well as artistry for impact. At the end, the dancers slowly process past the glowing bowl, each sprinkling an offering into it as she passes.

 

Lest We Forget: English National Ballet at the Barbican Theatre, 12 April 2014 evening performance – Maggie Watson reviews

Thrilling, innovative and original, the programme Lest We Forget marks another exciting advance for English National Ballet under Tamara Rojo’s leadership. Following last autumn’s production of Le Corsaire, she has now showcased the company further with an evening that included three new works, each by a different choreographer.  Marking the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, Liam Scarlett, Russell Maliphant and Akram Khan’s contrasting approaches range from the almost literal and ballet-based (Scarlett) through the largely abstract and contemporary (Maliphant) to the intensely personal and culturally eclectic (Khan).

 

Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker in “Tatyana”, Barbican Theatre, 9 February 2013 – Maggie Watson reviews

Tatyana is an extraordinary dance work that tells an intense emotional story inspired by Pushkin’s novel Eugene Onegin. This is not a work for those who prefer narrative interpretations of literature in dance. Characters and events are hinted at with telling props: Onegin, the dandy is characterized by his hat and the cane that will kill Lensky; Lensky fights the duel with a fan, which he whirls and snaps open and shut ineffectually; Tatyana’s marriage is indicated by a veil.