1 GISELLE’S AWAKENING
Giselle (Royal Ballet), Royal Opera House
Woken from death, Giselle (Natalia Osipova) is transformed into a wili, a vengeful spirit. Entering upstage, her face chalk-white, she appears to be sleepwalking. Then her eyes snap open and with the demented precision of a wind-up doll, she starts to hop round and round on the spot in arabesque. Electrifying.
2 BOOKS COME ALIVE
Casting Traces (New Movement Collective), Brighton
The walk-through piece is based on Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy and set in a labyrinth of paper-walled rooms. At first only dimly visible, the dancers draw their outlines in water on the screens and step through the collapsing paper towards us. It’s as if they’ve emerged from the pages of Auster’s book, literary creations made flesh.
3 GLOW IN THE DARK BOYS
Lord of the Flies (New Adventures), Theatre Royal, Plymouth
In Matthew Bourne’s version of Golding’s novel, a party of schoolboys takes refuge from a bombing raid in a disused theatre. Accidentally, they’re locked in. Total darkness. One by one the boys’ phones flicker on, illuminating their panicked faces and underlining their, and our, absolute reliance on technology. Inevitably, there’s no signal.
4 CLASSIC FISH-SLAP
Don Quixote (Royal Ballet), Royal Opera House
Sancho Panza (Philip Mosley), ever the glutton, steals a large fish from Lorenzo’s stall but is seen, panics and hands the fish back. The furious Lorenzo (Gary Avis) takes a wild swing at Sancho Panza with the fish. Sancho Panza ducks, and the fish smacks into the absurd, puffed-up Gamache (Bennet Gartside). Old-school ballet slapstick, impeccably delivered.
5 CELEBRATION OF THE FLESH
Pas de Duh (70/30 Split), Lion & Unicorn, London
70/30 Split are Sophie Unwin and Lydia Cottrell, who create satirical cabaret about performance issues. To a recording of Edith Piaf’s Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, they enthusiastically wobble each other’s body fat – breasts, arms, bellies, bums and thighs. Funny, poignant and a brilliant encapsulation of dance’s obsession with female body shape.
