Find ballet and dance reviews

A pulsing one hour and 40 minutes for young ballet and hip hop dance fans.

Unbound by restrictions, they’ve been given free rein to create, implement and demonstrate to the world what contemporary ballet looks like. Hint: it looks great.

Sneakers gave even the most challenging of balletic steps a freer, looser quality, as if the dancers were about to step into flight.

At its best, Lubovitch's work elevates the spirit and serves as a reminder that there’s beauty in the world.

In the future features exciting works by Juanjo Arques and Hans van Manen, and is the most exciting programme by the Junior Company so far.

A random assortment of disassociated ballets performed with variable success - from the sublime to the nondescript. 

Members of the GöteborgsOperans dance company, along with members of choreographer Sidu Larbi Cherkaoui’s own Eastman ensemble, recently danced a joint venture of an extraordinary kind in Winterthur. 

Forsythe’s choreography allows ENB's male corps to display their virtuoso skill in its mixed programme at Sadler's Wells.

In a selection of modern and balletic works spanning several decades, the Australian Ballet pays tribute to one of Australia's best-loved choreographers.

It’s easy to imagine watching with a candy cane or mulled wine in hand. The Moscow Ballet captures The Nutcracker's festive vivacity and beauty in equal amounts.

Anniversaries are best celebrated with friends: Sasha Waltz & Guests’ “dialogue – wirbel: improvisationen” is a magical celebration of 25 years of Waltz’ unique universe at the Radialsystem in Berlin

A hypnotic experience! Some quibbles about choreography, lighting and designs but strong performances by talented young dancers reinforce the importance of the concept.

It was worth the price of admission just to see the ebullient revival of Geoffrey Holder’s Dougla.

Pennsylvania Ballet shows off in works by Balanchine, Petipa, and Wheeldon

Dada Masilo’s Giselle is about her redemption, not his.

Neumeier has a real talent for stepping easily between the interior world of individual fantasy and the exterior world of reality.

The Bolshoi dancers Anna Tikhomiova and Artemy Belyakov shine in the stylish and poetic version of La Sylphide by Johan Kobborg.

Yet another revival of MacMillan's signature ballet.  Enlivened by tremendous performances, not least in the title role, and still a classic. But, how long will that pertain?   

Sutra - meaning thread - offers a window into the world of Zen Buddhism and kung fu. Over the last 10 years, this production has toured to 33 countries and been seen by over 160,000 people. As part of a worldwide tour to mark its tenth anniversary Sutra returns to Sadlers Wells, the theatre that nurtured its creation.

Theatrical contemporary dance that speaks to the heart of the soul

Ballet and pop music meet in a new work by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and other exciting collaborations by Ernst Meisner, Hans van Manen and Wubkje Kuindersma

A fantastic score, wonderful costumes, brilliant dancing and stunning choreography coalesce beautifully in David Nixon’s magical The Little Mermaid for Northern Ballet.

The final instalment of Kevin Finnan's Earth trilogy is a fast-moving, electrifying fusion of dance, circus and digital technology 

The reality of the human condition, in both beauty and pain

Everywhere you look, there is kindness, consideration and generosity of spirit.

Two outstanding world premières honour the centenary of a great composer 

Just as Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Le Sacre du Printemps opened up new musical horizons for dance at the start of the 20th century, Ballett Zürich’s Stravinsky evening sees two leading modern choreographers revive these works.

Australian choreographer Martin Hansen riffs on GIFs and tweaks the dance world's obsession with lineage, creating a ritual of nostalgia that is both melancholy and exhilarating. 

Saburo Teshigawara's condensed reading of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde plays down notions of an adulterous union, a lovers' pact and spiritual journey, instead delivering a powerful image of female resilience.

Contemporary Ballet is alive, thriving and pushing in Boston

Michele Wiles’s BalletNext is clearly undergoing evolution.

Philadelphia Ballet's Story-First Swan Lake

It’s not about being on the biggest stage that matters, but what you do on any stage at all – dance like there is no-one watching. But, happily in this case, we are.

Bravo to Tulsa Ballet for doing everything they needed to do for a successful appearance at The Joyce Theater.

Sophisticated and fluid dance mixed with notable muscularity and strength in a woman-only choreographic programme 

Israel Galván breaks a lot of sacred eggs at the Hong Kong Arts Festival. A few serendipitous moments add to the fierce beauty of this defiant, narrative-free meditation on a life in flamenco. 

There’s always this hazard in self-produced works: you operate in a bubble where no one tells you that you need to look more outward and less inward.

Alexei Ratmansky and Justin Peck are all the more impressive among choreographers working today because of how many of their works seem destined to stay in the repertoire for a long time to come.

Not for anyone seeking an evening of entertaining dance theatre – dance is seldom used but when it comes, it is to great effect – but it is certainly a challenging treatise on our perceptions of body (and also gender) norms

Superstar husband-and-wife team, renowned violinist Vadim Repin and "tsarina of the dance" Svetlana Zakharova, go on a date and take us with them. The music fared much better than the ballet.

Étoiles from the Mariinsky and the Opera of Odessa rocked the Admiralspalast with Edward Clug’s sleek works Radio & Juliet and Quatro.

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

Ballett Zürich's Anna Karenina travels to Hong Kong (sadly, sans orchestra.) Nevertheless, the dramatic staging, score, and outstanding performances, among them mezzo soprano Lin Shi, prove dazzling.

A cube hangs suspended at an angle and Ramirez, harnessed to a line above the stage, floats above it, fulfilling the promise of dance and the human desire to escape gravity – to fly in angelic weightlessness. 

Vienna-based performance artist Michikazu Matsune riffs on an incident of ethnic profiling of an Alvin Ailey dancer at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport, to entrancing and provocative effect

Úrsula López, Tamara López and Leonor Leal present *Painter and Flamenco: J.R.T.*as part of Sadler's Wells' 2018 Flamenco Festival 

Tiler Peck is at her peak as an artist and let’s hope it lasts a long time.

Made in 2014, Yo Carmen was featured in last year’s Edinburgh Festival.  It is a show with a powerful message and one which is occasionally riveting, mostly when Pagés herself is the focus of attention.

San Francisco Ballet delivers the distinct and the relevant in a mixed-bill program of choreographic works that includes Ghosts in the Machine.

A strongly cast revival of The Winter's Tale by The Royal Ballet confirms one of Shakespeare's "problem plays" as perhaps being best suited to dance.