Wide Awake and Charged

“It’s a tribute to the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s eclectic, open spirit that, once again, they visit the UK with a programme of work never seen here before,” Guardian reviewer Judith Mackrell writes. “In Javier De Frutos’s Banderillero, the company look wide awake, sexy and charged. Inspired by bullfighting, the work is structured around a lit square — the arena in which performers display and fight. The ferocious beat of the Chinese percussion score goads the dancers to a stamping, twisting, bullish extravagance of movement, but also to the angular taunting elegance of the titular Banderillero.” The company also performed British choreographer Jorma Elo’s Plan to A and A Song in the Dark, by New Zealand-born Andrew Simmons.