Articles by Stephanie Green

Assembly Hall

A curate’s egg, flashes of brilliance but with a first third of tedious mire, Kidd Pivot company’s Assembly Hall, about an amateur medieval re-enactment society, will divide au…

Nigamon / Tunai

Nigamon/Tunai is an inspirational immersive ritual created by indigenous artists, Émilie Monnet from Canada and Waira Nina from Columbia who seek to draw attention to the destruct…

This Is Not Romeo and Juliet

Not to be missed, hugely inventive, an extraordinary show, This is Not Romeo and Juliet choreographed by Danish Palle Granhøj is experimental but with broad appeal.

What songs may do...

Impressive dancers and choreography by Mathieu Geffré in Rendezvous Dance’s What Songs May Do should have had everything going for it.

These Mechanisms

Absurd, joyful and breath-taking, this brilliant wee gem might be the dance/physical theatre show of the fest.

Sleeper

Imaginative and atmospheric with striking visual images, there is much to recommend in Jajack Movement’s Sleeper, choreographed by Kim Yumi.

Lewis Major: Triptych

Mesmerising and minimalist in style, this quadruple bill of dance and light will stay in your memory as dance, lighting, and music all meld into an exquisite whole.

Edward Scissorhands

A sure fire winner, a tear-jerker with comedic appeal, Mathew Bourne’s New Adventures’ Edward Scissorhands, is based on Tim Burton’s 1990 film but reimagined for dance.

When Mountains Meet

Heartfelt, feel-good, this is a highly enjoyable performance.

The Girls of Slender Means

The delightful wit with its dark undertow of Murial Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means is caught brilliantly in this adaptation by Gabriel Quigley, directed by Roxana Silbert.

James V: Katherine

A brilliant gem, witty, gallus (cheeky) James V: KATHERINE by Rona Munro (a Raw Material and Capital Theatres Production) pulls no punches.

On Before Carlos Acosta

For charisma, no other male dancer can beat Carlos Acosta, one of the greatest classical dancers of our times, still spell-binding at fifty.

Cinders!

Is Cinders a male or a female? Audiences won’t know until the curtain rises on a particular night.

Mathew Bourne's Romeo + Juliet

Rape, homophobic bullying, knife crime and murder in a mental health/correctional institute, Mathew Bourne’s Romeo+Juliet is probably the most shocking and bold of his re-imaginin…

Ballet Black: Pioneers

Pioneers: Ballet Black is an inspired pairing of dance pieces, both in terms of subject matter and in their exploratory choreography.

The Nutcracker

Usually The Nutcracker means it is the Christmas season but here we are in March.

Giselle

Giselle, the Gothic-Romantic iconic classical ballet of love, betrayal and forgiveness is one of the few ballets to have come down to us from the 19th century.

Rambert Peaky Blinders The Redemption of Thomas Shelby

Ballet Rambert’s Peaky Blinders: the Redemption of Thomas Shelby is male swagger, jaw-dropping, edge of your seat dance as pyrotechnics with all the cool of the TV gangster drama…

Scottish Ballet - The Snow Queen

Review
★★★★
Stephanie Green
Edinburgh
Multiple Venues
26th Nov, 2022

Magic, glitter, snowflake fairies, Jack Frosts, snow wolves and innocent love winning out, what more could you want? Circus acts, Romani travellers? A revival of its 2019 productio…

Innovations Contemporary Dance Platform Autumn 2022

Review
★★★
Stephanie Green
Edinburgh
The Studio
12th Nov, 2022

One of the excitements for an audience is to spot future stars.

Navy Blue

Navy Blue, the colour of workers’ overalls is an existential cry of protest, a dance/voice-over/visual performance choreographed by Oona Doherty and cast to Rachmaninov’s Piano…

Jungle Book reimagined

Breathtaking projections of animation by YeastCulture steal this show and a set which is largely conveyed by lighting.

Coppélia

An electrifying production, Scottish Ballet’s Coppélia, reimagined with robots and a new story that only nods to the original, is not just for sci-fi fans but addresses the seri…

ROOM

Interminable, intellectually pretentious and self-indulgent, former circus performer James Thiérrée’s Room produced by his own Swiss Compagnie du Hanneton, is presented as phys…

Bold Moves

Virtuostic, one dark, the other light bursting with irrepressible humour, this contrasting double bill Us choreographed by Zoë Ashe-Browne and Stroke Through the Tail by Marguerit…

Ice Age

Ice Age is a life-affirming show celebrating and bringing much-needed visibility to what disabled people can achieve as performers on stage despite being confined to a wheelchair.

Taiwan Season: See You

See You is must see.

End without Days

Cool with underlying passion and deceptively simple choreography by New Yorker/San Franciscan Stephen Pelton, End Without Days gets under your skin.

Burn

Alan Cumming is a tour de force as ever.

Taiwan Season: Light of Life

A magical, charming show of dance and acrobatics which will delight children and adults alike.

BOBBY WINNER

Taiwan Season: Tomato

Tomatoes erotic? Yes, erotic, silly, surreal, constantly surprising, Tomato, a physical theatre piece by dancer/choreographer Chou Kuan-Jou is brilliant.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart

Review
★★★★★
Stephanie Green
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Playfair Library, Old College / Playfair Library, Old College, South Bridge
13th Aug, 2022

Riotous, hilarious, alternately bonkers and clever The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart written by David Greig and co-created with Wils Wilson, has it all: folk music, especially …

The Scandal at Mayerling

Powerful psychodrama elevates Scottish Ballet’s The Scandal at Mayerling from what might have been mere melodrama, a skull and pistol its signature symbols, into an outstandingly…

NDT2: The Big Crying, Simple Things, Impasse

The convulsive pain of grief, a languorous classical quartet and an exuberant party piece undercut with darkness; these three pieces superbly contrast each other in mood and style,…

The Great Gatsby

Review
★★★★
Stephanie Green
UK Regional & Tours
Edinburgh Festival Theatre / Milton Keynes Theatre / New Theatre Cardiff
23rd Apr, 2022

Manic parties and manic dance, glorious swirls of colour, Chanel-inspired floating dresses and jazz from the Roaring Twenties, contrasted with the green light throbbing in the dist…

Kontakthof: Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch

Disconcerting, both humourous and visceral, Kontakthof performed by Tanztheater Wuppertal continues to shock.

Carmen

Review
★★★★★
Stephanie Green
Scotland
EICC
20th Dec, 2021

A love triangle, passion, jealousy, the colour of red roses and bull-fighter capes: just what you would expect in this stunning contemporary dance version of Bizet’s Carmen, re-i…

Christmas Dinner

A heart-warming show of joy and magic at Christmas time, Catherine Wheels’ Christmas Dinner, written by Robert Alan Evans and directed by Gill Robertson, is particularly welcome …

Scottish Ballet’s The Nutcracker

Snow falling, Christmas baubles, glitz and magic - Scottish Ballet’s The Nutcracker to Tchaikovsky performed by the company’s live orchestra is like a box of chocolate treats.

Starstruck: Scottish Ballet

Glitz and glamour, fun and frolics, Scottish Ballet’s Starstruck is a delight, just what we need after 18 months of closed theatres.

Starting From First Position

Mercurial, subtle and rousing Starting from First Position is a blend of dance and poetry performed by Nigerian born poet Ben Okri (also 1991 Booker prize winner for his novel, The…

BOBBY WINNER

Family Portrait

A charming, funny and touching interactive video installation, Family Portrait by Natasha Gilmore’s Barrowland Ballet features Natasha herself as mother and single parent and her…

Taiwan Season: Touchdown

A man falls from the side of the screen onto the floor.

Taiwan Season: The Back of Beyond

Tai Gu Tales was created by Hsiu Wei Lin, formerly a principal dancer with the iconic Taiwanese Cloud Gate company.

Amina Khayyam Dance – Catch the Bird Who Won't Fly

Amina Khayyam’s Catch the Bird Who Won’t Fly, a Kathak dance piece using animation and green screen is beautiful, subtle and moving despite its grim subject matter: domestic vi…

Grin

Challenging, daring, with longeurs but also explosive moments, this makes for uncomfortable viewing but is a much-needed and to be applauded show.

Iconnotations

Music-theatre with solo cello plus dance, Iconnotations is extraordinary: surreal, wry, expressionistic, at times baffling, profoundly sad but at the end joyous.

Opia

How do we interpret the world through our senses, particularly through sight? A mesmerically beautiful triptych of two solos and one duet, choreographed by Finnish Johanna Nuutinen…

Fugue in Two Colors

If Carl Knif’s Fugue in Two Voices is a joke, then it’s a dud.

Taiwan Season: Fighters

We need heroes in these strange times is the thesis of this show, and Les Petites Choses’ Fighters brings us five.

Taiwan Season: ai-sa-sa

Ai~sa~sa meaning ‘Get over yourself’ is brilliant.

The Secret Theatre

Where is the glitter and magic, our annual Christmas treat, without the Sugar Plum Fairy or the Snow Queen? With theatre doors closed during these sad times, Scottish Ballet have c…

Antigone, Interrupted

Experimental, inventive and hugely daring, Antigone, Interrupted is Sophocles re-imagined, the first production by Joan Clevillé since becoming Artistic Director of Sc…

Scottish Ballet: The Snow Queen

A wintry tale of fire and ice where selfless love wins, The Snow Queen, choreographed by Christopher Hampson, is a dangerous journey encountering bandits and snow creatures.

An Edinburgh Christmas Carol

Full of good cheer, fun and jokes, carols under falling snow, spooky ghosts and glitter, what better way to get into the Christmas spirit than go to An Edinburgh Christmas Carol, D…

Juliet & Romeo

Both humourous and sad, Juliet and Romeo by Lost Dog company, presented by The Place, written with sensitive forensic analysis and directed by Ben Duke, is a subversion of Shakespe…

The Hospital

A brilliant Scandi noir of the psyche, spoken in gibberish in a surreal world, Norwegian Jo Strømgren Kompani’s The Hospital, is gripping; moving from bizarre, black humour to d…

Looping: Scotland Overdub

Billed as part Brazilian street dance and part Scottish ceilidhe with everyone invited to share the dance floor and a whisky, this suggested a rather more joyful, carnivalesque exp…

Body Language by David Bolger and Christopher Ash

If you have ever wondered how contemporary dance choreography is created (as opposed to classical ballet) this fascinating show, CoisCéim Dance Theatre’s Body Language directed …

The Chosen

How do we face dying if we know we have a terminal illness? And also how do we live in the face of death, imminent or not? Losing several friends in the same year, Kally Lloyd-Jo…

BOBBY WINNER

Taiwan Season: Floating Flowers

Floating Flowers by B.

From the Top

A delight, witty but profound exploration of the power relationship between choreographer and dancers, From the Top, choreographed by Hong Kong-based Victor Fung, is a send-up of a…

And the Birds Did Sing

Christine Devaney’s And the Birds Did Sing is a gentle, moving meditation on the loss of her father, expressed through story-telling and some expressive physical movement to an e…

Taiwan Season: Monster

Monster choreographed and performed by Yen-Cheng Liu of Dua Shin Te Production is a show about the monster within us but the trouble with alienation is that it alienates the audien…

Steve Reich Project

If this was billed as Music and took place in a concert hall, the MP4 Quartet’s perfomance of three pieces by Steve Reich, Pendulum Music, Different Trains and WC 9/11 would earn…

Another

Another is a quadruple selection of dance pieces by the fledgling company Ballet-works founded by a former soloist of Stuttgart Ballet, Robert Robertson and comprises both contempo…

Heroes

What a delight to hear the giggles and laughter, sometimes hysterical, of children, aged four and up in the audience throughout Heroes, a circus, acrobatics and aerial dance show a…