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Rupert Christiansen

Rupert Christiansen

The Telegraph

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Choreographers! Enough with the reworkings of Carmen and Frankenstein!

Carmen and Frankenstein are without a doubt two of the most over-worked tropes in our culture, the myths of the evasively seductive gypsy and the...

04.04.2024 7

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Royal Ballet’s MacMillan triple bill reviewed

My feelings about the genius of Kenneth MacMillan have always been volatile, but in the course of the Royal Ballet’s current triple bill, they...

28.03.2024 5

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

Dance / What would Balanchine say? New York City Ballet, at Sadler’s Wells, reviewed

It’s been 16 years since New York City Ballet appeared in London, and its too-brief visit to Sadler’s Wells offered a welcome chance to encounter...

15.03.2024 7

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

Precious nonsense: Pina Bausch’s Nelken, at Sadler’s Wells, reviewed

Fifteen years after her death and the shrine to Pina Bausch is still thick with incense and adulation. Whether one acknowledges her as a genius or...

22.02.2024 7

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

Lucid and lean: Metamorphoses, at the Theatre Royal Bath, reviewed

Literate, thoughtful and serious, Kim Brandstrup ranks as one of the most honest and honourable of contemporary choreographers. A proper grown-up,...

08.02.2024 7

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

Giselle is lovingly revived at the London Coliseum

Two archetypal ballet heroines have been facing each other across WC2: at the Coliseum, Giselle the blameless virgin, wronged in the first act,...

25.01.2024 7

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

Dance / The best British Nutcracker

The Nutcracker is one of those Christmas traditions that turns out to be not very traditional at all. First performed in St Petersburg in 1892, it...

18.12.2023 4

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

Arts / The award-winning choreographer who fell foul of the mob

Ebullient, articulate and eminently sensible, Rosie Kay never wanted to be a martyr to the culture wars. A modern dance choreographer with an...

05.12.2023 4

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

An awesome spectacle: The Mongol Khan, at the London Coliseum, reviewed

When the Ballets Russes first presented Fokine’s Polovtsian Dances at Covent Garden in 1911, such was its orgiastic savagery that ladies in the...

23.11.2023 6

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

A farrago of Blakean mysticism and steampunk twaddle: BalletBoyz’s England on Fire, at Sadler’s Wells, reviewed

It’s nearly a quarter of a century since Michael Nunn and William Trevitt bravely left their safe haven at the Royal Ballet to set up BalletBoyz, a...

16.11.2023 7

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

Arts / Can everyone please shut up about Maria Callas?

One thing that exasperated me intensely during my many years as an opera critic was the assumption that I must be a passionate admirer of Maria...

07.11.2023 3

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

Uninventive and far too polite: BRB’s Black Sabbath – The Ballet reviewed

Not being an aficionado of the heavy-metal genre, I snootily suspected that I would rather be standing in the rain flogging the Big Issue than suffer...

19.10.2023 4

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

Striking but not altogether successful: ENB’s Our Voices reviewed

Aaron S. Watkin, an affable bearded Canadian, is the new artistic director of English National Ballet. He arrives from Dresden, where he ran a...

28.09.2023 5

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

A haunting masterpiece: Northern Ballet’s Adagio Hammerklavier reviewed

One could soundly advise any choreographer to avoid music so transcendentally great in itself that dance can add nothing except banal images. Only a...

14.09.2023 8

The Spectator

Rupert Christiansen

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