Royal Opera House, LondonThe Royal Ballet’s long-running and rather cumbersome Swan Lake is elevated by the dancers’ artistry, while a fine Kenneth MacMillan triple bill deserves more performances The status of Swan Lake has changed. Once it was first among equals in the traditional three-acter stakes, combining Tchaikovsky’s score with a heartbreaking story of sacrifice and love and some magnificent choreography by the 19th-century master Marius Petipa and his protege Lev Ivanov. Now it’s seen as the brand ballet, an automatic seat-filler, and hence coffers-filler. This explains its presence ..read more

Royal Opera House, London The Royal Ballet revisits the choreographer’s timeless rags-to-riches work, putting assorted casts through its finely tuned emotional wringer In 2011, at the age of 46, when she had barely danced a classical work for four years, Sylvie Guillem returned to the role of Manon in Kenneth MacMillan’s three-act ballet. She said she wanted to make sure there was nothing new she could find in this, his 1974 dance interpretation of Abbé Prévost’s story of a convent girl who becomes a courtesan and dies when her love for a penniless student overwhelms her determination to make ..read more

Royal Opera House, London Impressive new work from Joshua Junker and Mthuthuzeli November pushes dancers well beyond the classical repertoire Ballet is a heritage art form that craves renewal. Companies often seek a galvanising jolt from artists in other dance styles, but the Royal Ballet’s festival gives classically trained makers a space to spread their wings, with length, large ensembles and strong design. The evening of new works results in confident main stage debuts for two experienced women based in New York and two younger men working in the UK. The only choreographer drawn from the R ..read more

Royal Opera House, LondonKenneth MacMillan’s journey into a world of darkness is performed with consummate craft by a superb company In the 1970s Kenneth MacMillan snatched ballet from the land of myths and fairytales and thrust it into worlds of psychological darkness, with complex, unsympathetic characters that dancers love to get their teeth into. Does Manon, a ballet about prostitution and sexual violence, come dangerously close to misery porn? In the lower rungs of 18th-century Paris, women are bought and abused, the society on show is an ugly one, but this is ballet so it’s also beautifu ..read more

From Withnail and I on stage to Olivia Rodrigo on tour, Sally Wainwright’s new drama to Blondie, Bruckner and Jez Butterworth, our experts guide you through the treats in store this year Make time for three masterly moviesThere comes a point when the buzz about a movie release starts to be deafening. Then the pre-emptive backlash kicks in. Can it really be the masterpiece that people are claiming it is, or have the critics and festival punters fallen prey to collective hysteria? It’s a fair question, but for three forthcoming releases the hype is very much justified ..read more

Tiler Peck breezed in, Carmen Herrera bowed out, Benji Reid made a striking return and Pam Tanowitz entranced Read the Observer critics’ review of 2023 in full 1. Song of Songs Barbican, London; October American choreographer Pam Tanowitz has had a gleaming 2023, with a triple bill for the Royal Ballet (Secret Things, Dispatch Duet and Everyone Keeps Me) that revealed her deep understanding of dance history. But it was Song of Songs, for her own company, that sealed her reputation as one of the most significant dance-makers of our own time. Cool, rigorous, and intricately structured, unfoldi ..read more

This year, our readers were blown away by productions from Machinal to Free Your Mind – with one theatregoer returning to watch Groundhog Day four times Fortune theatre, LondonA gloriously silly take on second world war subterfuge. Think MI6 the musical, complete with General Melchett, cross dressing, and lots of eye rolling at Ian Fleming. The score is infectious, the jokes so fast you will only catch half of them on the first viewing, and a half dozen performers create the presence and energy of 50 on Broadway. See it while you can – you will laugh and cry, and you won’t regret it. Lewis, 32 ..read more

Coliseum; Royal Opera House, London The two companies variously capture the Christmas classic’s glittering pleasures – and its narrative strangeness The Nutcracker is ballet’s pantomime. Villains, heroines and magic. An audience full of festive cheer. Lots of little girls and boys in their party best on a family treat, grandmas and grandads in tow. A mood of high anticipation and enjoyment. Some of Tchaikovsky’s most beautiful and hummable tunes rising from the orchestra. For the ballet companies, it’s a seasonal banker – a chance to ensure money in the coffers during increasingly hard times ..read more

Royal Opera House; Barbican Pit, London Everything comes together in an exhilarating Royal Ballet revival of The Dante Project, while Rhiannon Faith’s new work is all about sharing… The power of dance to inspire and console has been the theme this past week. It was the explicit intention of Rhiannon Faith’s community-style piece Lay Down Your Burdens. But it’s also the effect of Wayne McGregor’s dazzling The Dante Project, a work that is breathtaking and uplifting in almost equal measure. Part of the pleasure of this musing journey on Dante’s The Divine Comedy comes from seeing a highly skille ..read more

Royal Opera House, LondonLauren Cuthbertson and Marcelino Sambé reprise their roles to glorious effect in Cathy Marston’s inspired paean to Jacqueline du Pré, while an adaptation of Sam Steiner’s hit play Lemons… feels squeezed Upstairs and downstairs, in the main house and in the smaller Linbury theatre, the Royal Ballet is exploring what narrative dance can do. Upstairs is having a rather better time of it. Cathy Marston’s The Cellist, created in 2020 and inspired by the tragic life of cellist Jacqueline du Pré, whose glorious talent was snuffed out by multiple sclerosis, blazes back to the ..read more