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Under the Floorboards: Magdalen College School

2:54pm Wednesday 18th April 2012

Liv Lorent founded Newcastle-based BalletLORENT in 2005, and has won many awards for her contemporary choreography.

Beauty and the Beast: Milton Keynes Theatre

2:48pm Wednesday 18th April 2012

This is the latest in David Nixon’s series of full-length story ballets, and both in atmosphere and in spirit it falls into two halves. Nixon has updated the story to the 20th century. His costumes are a hybrid of 1950s debutantes’ dresses for the girls and Dolce & Gabbana-esque black macho for the men.

Two to Tango: The Mill, Banbury

2:28pm Wednesday 11th April 2012

This turned out to be a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Inside the auditorium though, it could have been night time, as the lighting was kept very low, in keeping with the clubby feeling the performers were aiming at. Instead of rows of seats we had round tables scattered around the floor, with an open space for dancing in the middle .It was a showcase for two groups of musicians. First up we had The Next Hot Thing, an hour of jazz, with songs from Suzette ‘The Duchess’ Neptune, backed by guitar, sax and piano. She has a fine, deep voice, with a lot of power when needed, but can also soften it down for smoochier numbers in her set. A striking figure, the silver stud in her pierced tongue glinted continuously in the stage lighting. Suzette began with a fine rendering of S’Wonderful, and took us through a bunch of well known standards, among them You Go to My Head and Mac the Knife, to end the set with Hoagy Carmichael’s Georgia.

Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker: New Theatre, Oxford

2:26pm Wednesday 11th April 2012

This was Matthew Bourne’s first full length work, made three years before the ground-breaking Swan Lake, with its cast of male swans, that hurled him into ballet super-stardom. Its enduring appeal is evident in the fact that it’s playing to full houses 20 years later.

Swinging at the Cotton Club: The Theatre, Chipping Norton

1:52pm Wednesday 11th April 2012

This show was a real dive back into the past, and the predominantly grey-haired audience was obviously relishing a reminder of the days when going out dancing meant jiving to the likes of Chris Barber and Acker Bilk at 100 Oxford Street. But it’s set even further back in time, and attempts on a small scale, but very successfully, to recreate the joie de vivre of performers and audience at New York’s famous Cotton Club in the 1930s and 40s. At that time the dance was the ‘Lindy Hop’, the best known dance aspect of the swing era, and forerunner of jiving and rock and roll.

Beauty and the Beast at Milton Keynes and Aylesbury

8:10am Thursday 5th April 2012

DAVID BELLAN talks to David Nixon about his new, full-length ballet, Beauty And The Beast

The Lord of the Dance: New Theatre, Oxford

2:28pm Wednesday 4th April 2012

A member of the company’s management sourly refused me a complimentary reviewer’s programme. I firmly refused (on behalf of The Oxford Times) to fork out an outrageous eight quid. So, rightly, did almost all of the New Theatre audience — I only saw perhaps half a dozen of these glossy productions in the whole of the stalls. So, as it turned out, I saw the show under the same conditions as the audience, without the benefit of a programme note. Would I be able to follow the plot? There isn’t much of it!

Ballet Central: Chipping Norton Theatre and touring

2:45pm Wednesday 28th March 2012

This company consists of graduating students of the Central School of Ballet — 30 dancers from 11 different countries.

An Evening of Burlesque: New Theatre, Oxford

2:47pm Wednesday 28th March 2012

The art of burlesque goes back centuries, but eventually it became more or less synonymous with strip.

Compagnie Retouramont: Oxford Castle

2:32pm Wednesday 28th March 2012

Last year this French company’s performance was one of the hits of Dancin’ Oxford, with a single dancer suspended against the wall of the former prison. Encouraged by this success they came back this year with five dancers, to present their new show Danse des Cariatides, in which the female sculptures that support the roofs of buildings come to life. To quote their programme note: “These beings of stone leave their pedestal and enter into the space they have gazed at for so long. Their mineral consistency softens, and they slowly extricate themselves from the architecture. Under the foundations live huge caryatids who support the architecture. They emerge from the subsoil, keep close to facades, play with volumes, and finally meet for nocturnal dances.”