Rupert Christiansen

London

Reporter at Freelance

Writer at The Spectator

off duty, off message

Articles

Christopher Wheeldon’s real gifts lie in abstract dance

2 weeks ago | spectator.com.au | Rupert Christiansen

Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon WorksRoyal Opera House, until 27 May Christopher Wheeldon must be one of the most steadily productive and widely popular figures in today’s dance world, but I’m yet to be persuaded that he has much gift for narrative.
Christopher Wheeldon's real gifts lie in abstract dance

2 weeks ago | spectator.co.uk | Rupert Christiansen

Christopher Wheeldon must be one of the most steadily productive and widely popular figures in today’s dance world, but I’m yet to be persuaded that he has much gift for narrative. His adaptation of the novel Like Water for Chocolate was a hopeless muddle; his response to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is mere vaudeville; and I’m praying to St Jude that nobody is planning to import his dramatisation of Oscar Wilde’s downfall, premièred in Australia last year.
Budget Ballets Russes: BRB2’s Diaghilev and the Birth of Modern Ballet reviewed

3 weeks ago | spectator.com.au | Rupert Christiansen

BRB2: Diaghilev and the Birth of Modern BalletSadler’s Wells EastIn C; Rambert x (LA)HORDE: Bring Your OwnQueen Elizabeth Hall Although I doff my hat to Carlos Acosta’s BRB2, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s junior troupe, for a reminder of what is owed to the Ballets Russes – nothing less than the creation of a new art form – the programme it’s presenting in Diaghilev and the Birth of Modern Ballet is neither well balanced nor coherent.
Budget Ballets Russes: BRB2's Diaghilev and the Birth of Modern Ballet reviewed

3 weeks ago | spectator.co.uk | Rupert Christiansen

How do you make assisted suicide safe? In recent months, a large part of Kim Leadbeater’s answer has been to point to the involvement of psychiatrists. Having a psychiatrist sign off each death, Leadbeater said, would ‘add expertise’. They would be part of a much-touted ‘multidisciplinary’ approach. In particular, they would be able to check
Privacy must be defended

1 month ago | telegraph.co.uk | Rupert Christiansen

I grew up in a polite, orderly middle-class suburb in the 1960s, where today's idea of belonging to a broader, vaguer "community" was unheard of. Neighbourliness was confined to morning greetings and borrowing a pint of milk. What was paramount was "minding your own business": behind your front door, your life was your own. We knew that "an Englishman's home was his castle," and only a search warrant could breach it.
Exhilarating - but also exhausting: ENB's The Forsythe Programme reviewed

1 month ago | spectator.co.uk | Rupert Christiansen

Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments The first time I saw the work of Trajal Harrell I stomped out in a huff muttering about the waste of public money and is this what the art of dance has come to. But perversely I was drawn back for more of its weirdness, and after The Köln Concert I am relenting. The guy might be on to something. A middle-aged, Yale-educated African-American with a melancholy air on stage, Harrell should probably be classified as...
Rejoice at the Royal Ballet’s superb feast of Balanchine

2 months ago | spectator.com.au | Rupert Christiansen

Balanchine: Three Signature WorksRoyal Opera House Any evening devoted to the multifaceted genius of George Balanchine is something to be grateful for, manna in the wilderness indeed, but the Royal Ballet’s current offering left me hungry for more. Three works were on the programme, all created in the early stage of the great man’s career, two of them widely familiar, none of them reflective of anything he created post-war for New York City Ballet.
Rejoice at the Royal Ballet's superb feast of Balanchine

2 months ago | spectator.co.uk | Rupert Christiansen

Any evening devoted to the multifaceted genius of George Balanchine is something to be grateful for, manna in the wilderness indeed, but the Royal Ballet’s current offering left me hungry for more. Three works were on the programme, all created in the early stage of the great man’s career, two of them widely familiar, none of them reflective of anything he created post-war for New York City Ballet.
What a joy to see some Merce Cunningham again

2 months ago | spectator.co.uk | Rupert Christiansen

How salutary to encounter the cool cerebral elegance of Merce Cunningham’s choreography again. A figure at the heart of the abstract tendency in post-war American culture, the lover and collaborator of John Cage, Cunningham emptied barefoot dance of ideology, symbolism, plot, personality, pretension: instead it became purely an exploration of bodies in movement, responsive to chance, sound and light.
What a joy to see some Merce Cunningham again

2 months ago | spectator.com.au | Rupert Christiansen

Lyon Opera Ballet: Cunningham ForeverSadler’s WellsNorthern Ballet: Jane EyreGrand Theatre, Leeds,, and touring until 24 May How salutary to encounter the cool cerebral elegance of Merce Cunningham’s choreography again.