Graham Watts

Dance Writer/Critic. Member of the Critics' Circle/Chairman of the Dance Section and National Dance Awards Committee. Writes for leading dance magazines & websites - in UK, Europe, USA, Japan & cyberspace. Graham is based in London.

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Moscow Kremlin Ballet – Swan Lake – Athens

by Graham Watts January 28, 2012 Reviews

Somova is going to become one of the world’s greatest dancers within a very few years and it is a great honour to have been able to watch the progress of her early career.

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Hofesh Shechter and Antony Gormley – Survivor – London

by Graham Watts January 14, 2012 Reviews

As has happened so often before, this collaboration by two individuals who are outstanding innovators in their own art, didn’t quite add up to the sum total of that brilliance.

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Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/ Jerome Bel – 3Abschied – London

by Graham Watts November 24, 2011 Reviews

It would have been bearable and perhaps even understandable if that had proven to be the end of the show. But, Bel then arrives and explains the rationale for continuing and it becomes clear that – in effect – the 3Abscheid is only now beginning…

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Ballet Manila – Pistang Pinoy – Manila

by Graham Watts November 19, 2011 Reviews

“This 30-minute show, ‘Pistang Pinoy’, has run over three nights every weekend for more than two years (clocking up almost 400 performances to date) and if there are more people wanting to see it than the Star Theatre can accommodate, then they just put on an extra show! Even extending to three shows in one evening has happened. What a great idea.

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Rambert Dance Company – Seven for a Secret bill – London

by Graham Watts November 18, 2011 Reviews

You can almost feel the warm breath’ of New Orleans blowing through ’Elysian Fields’, the world premiere of this work created by Javier De Frutos (his third piece for Rambert and his fifth for Pieter Symonds) to celebrate the centenary of Tennessee Williams’ birth.

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Cloud Gate Dance Theatre – White – London

by Graham Watts November 15, 2011 Reviews

The new direction being sought by Lin Hwai-Min, the maestro behind Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, is exemplified in ‘White’, the three sections of which provide an effective contrast between the old and the new. …My preference is easily for the older, more traditional work…

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Clod Ensemble – An Anatomie in Four Quarters – London

by Graham Watts November 3, 2011 Reviews

…I confess that I’m unable to provide any plausible linear explanation of how all these elements fitted together but, nevertheless, this was indubitably an innovative and largely exciting experience…

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Ballet Manila – Tatlong Kuwento ni Lola Basyang – Manila

by Graham Watts November 3, 2011 Reviews

Despite deriving from such an intimate, indigenous source, close to the hearts of Filipinos, this ballet could be staged anywhere in the world – provided that one could find a stage big enough to accommodate it – and every audience would warm to it.

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Richard Alston Dance Company – Richard Alston At Home – London

by Graham Watts October 29, 2011 Reviews

It was fascinating to have the opportunity to contemplate this broad sweep of Alston’s work and influences: from the simplicity of a fragment of ‘Still Moving Still’, made while still a student in 1969….

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Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre – Rian – London

by Graham Watts October 25, 2011 Reviews

For each dance that I enjoyed, there were at least two more that seemed to add very little to the affair. In total, it was a work that needed to be pruned down by a considerable amount…

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Latvian National Ballet with Cojocaru & Somova – Giselle – Athens

by Graham Watts October 18, 2011 Reviews

Back-to-back interpretations of Giselle by The Mariinsky’s Alina Somova and The Royal Ballet’s Alina Cojocaru, supported by the Latvian National Ballet, provided two remarkably different but nonetheless equally memorable performances.

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Quarantine in Entitled – London

by Graham Watts September 30, 2011 Reviews

There have been many shows about the process of making a show but I doubt that any have been devoted so exclusively to the intricacies of setting up and dismantling the set…

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Havana Rakatan – From Cuba with Love – London

by Graham Watts September 22, 2011 Reviews

The imbalances of the early iterations of Havana Rakatan have been very effectively addressed in this newest production which is even zestier and more joyful than I recall. It is a show that is sure to raise the spirits…

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Review: Akademi in ‘Song of the City’ – London

by Graham Watts August 23, 2011 Reviews

It would have been easier, I contend, to have taken a straight classical bharatnatyam interpretation of Tagore’s life and work but, instead, the creative team has engineered a diverse approach interpolating dance, music, film, text and style as equal partners…

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Rosie Kay Dance Company – The Great Train Dance – Kidderminster

by Graham Watts July 28, 2011 Reviews

The Great Train Dance was an event with that kind of feel-good factor; a dance performance that belonged inextricably in the space and time of just this one day, unexpected owls and all! If everything connected with the London Olympics is going to be this much fun then Seb Coe can sit back and smile.

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Circa – Wunderkammer – London

by Graham Watts July 25, 2011 Reviews

This was a sexy, uber-talented group that kept up the tour of their cabinet of curiosities with bundles of humour (mostly from Darcy Grant) and outrageous tricks. Not everything worked but, given the overall slickness, I suspect that those few parts that didn’t gel were probably last-minute additions or changes necessitated to overcome the missing man.

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Hofesh Shechter – Political Mother: The Choreographer’s Cut – London

by Graham Watts July 16, 2011 Reviews

“Awesome” was the word in vogue around the back streets of Islington as a distinctly younger dance crowd than is usual filed out of Sadler’s Wells. And, although a much over-used word these days, it was a bang-on exclamation

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Ballet Manila – East Meets West – London

by Graham Watts July 15, 2011 Reviews

I’m hard-pressed to recall seeing a mixed programme with 15 such diverse works and this tiny ensemble of 17 performers worked incredibly hard over more than two hours of dancing. I was certainly sold on their energy and passion…

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Les ballets C de la B – Gardenia – London

by Graham Watts July 3, 2011 Reviews

The intriguing background of its performers should have created a highly personal show – a collective auto-biography told via the medium of dance theatre – but surprisingly Gardenia failed to generate any lasting intimacy and gave me neither an understanding, nor an empathy for any of these extraordinary characters.

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Eva Yerbabuena & Rocio Molina at Flamenco Festival London 2011

by Graham Watts February 18, 2011 Reviews

Yerbabuena often appeared in the late Pina Bausch’s Wuppertal Festival and both of these works contained strong accents of the mid-European Tanztheater that Bausch commanded.

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