In one of the worst reviews of the season, the Financial Times’ Clement Crisp finds almost nothing to like in Carlos Acosta’s Premieres Plus at the London Coliseum:
I remember visiting East Berlin when that city was still divided, and being intrigued by shops whose windows were filled with boxes which proclaimed delicacies of many kinds. A friend explained that the boxes, like the shops, were empty, and that I was being fooled by illusory goods. I feel not a little like my then companion in reporting on the return of the Carlos Acosta/Zenaida Yanowsky evening, which has been indefensibly lurking at the Coliseum…
… Yanowsky and Acosta, amid the encircling gloom, are engaged in incomprehensible encounters which convey unease, anger and sheer desperation – and who should be surprised at these emotions? They had been mine since curtain-rise. Movement is clogged with factitious dramatics, and the only question is to discover to what purpose these dancers should be indulging in such obscure and tedious activities.
… The one acceptable moment in the evening is when [Yanowsky] repeats her performance in Kim Brandstrup’s Footnotes to Ashton, which, albeit less than effective on the Coliseum stage, earns the event its star on this page. Otherwise, I found the evening to be of incomprehensible but potent awfulness.
via FT.com
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