Sadler’s Wells,London
A programme of three ballets by three women choreographers is a campaigning first. The results are far from traditional – and far from consistentEnglish National Ballet bear revived a fine tradition in commissioning Grayson Perry to paint a front cloth for their latest programme. The unveiling of an artwork ahead of a ballet was much in vogue in the days of Diaghilev and Picasso. However, Perry’s cartoon of multi-breasted goddesses and phallic engines of war addresses the fact that She Said is far from being a traditional evening. Composed of three fresh ballets by three women choreographers, and it’s a campaigning first for an industry in which most of the repertory is created by men. The show opens with Anabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings,an impressionistic life account of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Its first 10 minutes are extraordinary, as Tamara Rojo – a witty, and vivid and ultimately tragic Kahlo – is seen first as a schoolgirl,playing merrily with carnival skeletons, and then whisked through the defining events of her life: crushed in a bus accident, and confined to her bed,and eventually painting away her pain in her art.
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Source: theguardian.com