Saturday, November 27, 2010


This week's new danceMatthew Bourne: Cinderella

Matthew Bourne: Cinderella.

Matthew Bourne: Cinderella, London

It's been more than a decade since Matthew Bourne's Cinderella was last performed in the UK and it returns this season with a distinctive and compelling makeover, complete with revised choreography and a radical re-edit of its accompanying Prokofiev score. As you'd expect from Bourne, this Cinders looks nothing like the traditional fairytale. Rather, with the help of designer Lez Brotherston the story has been updated to wartime London in 1940, with Prince Charming transformed into a dashing RAF pilot. This Cinderella also sounds different too, with Bourne and his sound designer Paul Groothius opting to give an almost cinematic emphasis to the drama of the Blitz by editing the noise of falling bombs and anti-aircraft fire into a recorded version of Prokofiev's famous 1943 score, and delivering the whole production in absorbing, graphic surround sound.
Sadler's Wells, EC1, Tue to 23 Jan

Precious Little Sleep, Buxton

Wayne SleepWayne Sleep. Photograph: David Sillitoe
At five foot two, Wayne Sleep may have been the shortest male dancer ever to be hired by the Royal Ballet but he ended up stamping his own diminutive dynamo image on to the company's repertory and far beyond, becoming a popular culture fixture in the 1970s and 80s. A fast, fizzing dancer with a virtuoso jump and a scintillating pirouette technique, Sleep had memorable roles created for him by some of the Royal's leading choreographers over the years, including Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. After he retired from the classical stage, Sleep developed a whole new career in musical theatre, starring in blockbusting mainstream hits such as Cats, Song And Dance and Cabaret. And it is both the length and the breadth of his dancing life that Sleep is celebrating in this latest show. Autobiographical in some of its material, and of course with Sleep himself at its centre, this production (which is getting a preview in Buxton before its 2011 tour), is playfully described its creator as a "a montage of my best spins".
Buxton Opera House, Tue

Earthfall: The Factory, Caernarfon

Earthfall: The FactoryEarthfall: The Factory.
The latest production from Earthfall explores the myths and the reality surrounding the artist Andy Warhol, and the outrageous creative community he built around himself at the Silver Factory on New York's East 47th Street in the 1960s. Film footage, along with dance and live music is used to evoke the singular underground ambience of the Factory while portraying some of the models, musicians, dancers, writers and painters who frequented it. One of the stories narrated is that of the Judson Dance Theater member Freddy Herko, who took so much amphetamine on one occasion that he heroically but suicidally danced his way from a fifth-floor window to the sounds of Mozart's Sanctus. The Factory also explores the 60s zeitgeist of hedonism, decadence and protest, of which Warhol became both icon and demon.
Galeri Caernarfon Cyf, Sat

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