Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | The Place

Liam Francis Dance Company at The Place brings an instinctive and intelligent debut for a choreographer in-step with what it is to be a dance artist now. 

Greek Mythology and German Expressionism enliven the great gothic horror story.

An absorbing interaction of human movement and animated light, optical illusions and supreme energy.

A poignant farewell leaves the home audience wanting more.

A fresh and surprising take on Dickens' classic tale 

Choreographer Ben Duke offers a candid glimpse of Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers if they had survived the gauntlet of death draughts and daggers.

A strong and challenging work that is enlivened by an eclectic mix of performers 

Luca Silvestrini's *Border Tales* returns to the London stage. Four years on, and post Brexit vote, it resonates deeper.

Men and Girls Dance created by Fevered Sleep is like a perfectly cooked soufflé. Astonishingly light and delicately fragranced. It's flawlessness is finite, the subtle favours and gossamer texture melt away as it touches your tongue. Exquisitely simple, but devilishly difficult to do well. 

The closest that dance theatre comes to the "Hammer" House of Horrors!  An imaginative, macabre, grotesque and colourful double bil. 

Tête-à-Tête opens with groundbreaking community opera, an interesting piece of Jamaican history, and two superb solo operas from the talented Tim Benjamin, finishing on a high with the glorious Silent Jack. 

Simone Damberg Würtz and Dane Hurst shine in an outstanding evening of new choreography.

Six budding choreographers show five unique dance pieces and one enthralling film in the third incarnation of In Good Company at The Place, London this weekend.

Luca Silvestrini’s Border Tales at The Place is a colourful, humorous look at multiculturalism in modern Britain.

The penultimate night of Resolution! 2014 presented Naomi Reynolds Dance with The Sob in the Spine, Mansoor Ali and Ellen Johannson with You Wave Your Dusty Hands Hello, and B-Hybrid Dance with Pace. At The Place, London.

Unseen new works by Suse Tietjen, Lucy Palmer Dance, Ishaan De Banya and Kenny Wing Tao Ho make up this instalment of the Resolution! festival at The Place, London.

This week at The Place Prize finals we’re invited yet again to “Step into the dance debate” and help select a winner from the remaining four UK choreographers. The finals are the last round of a two-year process that whittled 208 applications into 16 new dance commissions, which were narrowed yet again in the semi-finals last fall to the final four.

bgroup’s Just As We Are had three very different sections, that explored a similar progression of ideas in three very different ways. In short, the pieces moved from focusing on one person, then two people, then everyone (audience included). However, the method and moods used in each gave the sections very distinct textures.

Scottish Dance Theatre returned to The Place last week with a programme that kept you guessing, laughing and sometimes feeling a little uncomfortable, but undoubtedly the best part of the evening was experiencing the expressive honesty of the performers. Beginning the night was Second Coming by Rubber Band Dance Company’s Victor Quijada, followed by Jo Strømgren’s chilling Winter, Again.

2Faced Dance Company’s new work Out of His Skin is a pure adrenaline rush. This all-male company, lead by director Tamsin Fitzgerald, proves what the young, skilled body can accomplish.

The second mixed bill from Resolution! 2013 opens with La Típica’s Cambiar de Piel. This “Flamenco contemporary piece” is directed by Jose Vidal and choreographed by Natalia García-Huidobro, who performs with six musicians.The piece builds slowly as the perfomers cross the space, meeting each other’s eyes and eventually taking their places.

Resolution! is The Place’s annual platform for new dance work, this year featuring 81 pieces presented in triple bills between now and 15 February.Jacob Hobbs opened Resolution! 2013 in a spacesuit and helmet with silvery tubes coiling in and out at the back of his head. This is Hallo Spaceboy – Tom is an astronaut. He’s running out of air.

Richard Alston’s Autumn season At Home was greeted with a full house. Dance celebrities and non-celebrities, the older generation from his experimental years, and eager younger choreographers with notebooks all gathered in celebration at The Place.

Saturday’s Place Prize Semi-Final 4 showcased the work by the last of the 16 commissioned choreographers, and with it came the announcement of the four pieces chosen to move forward to the finals. The audience vote went to h2dance’s Duet from the second night, with an impressive vote of 4.1 out of 5 stars.

The Place Prize Semi-Final continued on Thursday, with Nina Kov, Neil Paris, bgroup and Darren Ellis showcasing work in the third evening of this four-night series. The Place Prize, now in its fifth edition, is a competition aimed at encouraging engagement with contemporary dance.

The second night of the Place Prize semi-finals proved even more entertaining than the first, with the next four choreographers vying for a spot in the final, and a chance to win £35,000. Mamoru Iriguchi, Rick Nodine, Dog Kennel Hill Project, and h2dance were the four choreographers billed in Saturday’s program, and each presented a new work that was enjoyable and memorable.

The Fifth Edition of The Place Prize is in full swing as the first four semi-finalists presented their work Saturday night to a sold-out audience.

Gecko visited The Place last week with Missing, a thrillingly dark narrative of a woman struggling with shadows of her past, as she is bombarded with the present demands of her fast-paced life. What made this performance so captivating was not necessarily the story itself, but the creative and technical choices made by director Amit Lahav and the performers to enrich this story.

Spring Loaded is The Place's platform for not-yet-established choreographers and companies, and has been a stepping stone in the way to success for artists such as Matthew Bourne and Russell Maliphant. Smith Dancetheatre appear as part of this year's programme with Agnes and Walter: A Little Love Story, their debut production.

In the first evening of The Place’s 2012 Spring Loaded showcase, Robert Clark and Darren Ellis dance presented two very different pieces that made for an enjoyable but eclectic show. The night began with Darren Ellis’ Long Walk Home, a series of solos performed by four women, who are at different points in their lives, investigating their current relationship with dance.

A Celebration of Bob Lockyer was less a celebration of the man than of his work. Lockyer has had a full career ranging from producer of award-winning dance programmes at the BBC, to chair of Dance UK and South-East Dance. His lengthy career has earned him the accolade of “one of the great heroes of British dance”.

Protein Dance revisited The Place this weekend to perform LOL (lots of love), a fresh and explosive work about love, relationships and our growing obsession with the internet and social media. Originally premièred in January 2011, LOL has been on tour around the UK since its return from a recent tour of the Middle East. Now back in London, Protein was as sharp as ever.

The evening kicks off joyfully, first with a curtain-raiser courtesy of The Grey Coat Hospital School, who are one of the latest groups to benefit from Tavaziva Dance’s extensive community and youth work; then, as the main event begins, with a vibrant drum solo which elicits whooping and dancing in the audience.

With touching honesty and keen articulacy, Scottish Dance Theatre presented a diverse mixed bill at The Place that contained in equal parts compelling choreography and masterful dancing. The highlight of the night was indisputably Rachel Lopez de la Nieta’s Pavlova’s Dogs, a forty-minute investigation that questions gender roles in the dance world, framed as an early psychological experiment.