... Bejart Ballet- Programme One Sadler's Wells Critics often complain that dance is all the same. Visit New York or Paris, and the same ballets are performed in pretty much the same way. But they need not worry. If the distinctive style of Maurice Bejart is anything to go by, national differences are alive and well and living in Lausanne. This 70-something choreo grapher has a reputation as a ...

... La Gioconda London Coliseum ENO's two concert performances of Ponchielli's Venetian melodrama gave the old war-horse a good canter while providing peachy parts for seven of Britain's finest singers. The convoluted plot tells how La Gioconda frustrates the villain Bamaba's attempts to possess her and enables the lovers, Enzo and Laura, to escape from the latter's vengeful husband, Alvise. Davy ...

... The Queen of Spades Cardiff/Touring Imaginative, innovative, determined to be controversial -- that is this new Welsh National Opera production. The suicidal Liza, rather than jumping into the river, asphyxi ates herself with a plastic bag. The Countess is frightened to death, literally, while taking a bath. Herman's nightmare occurs in a vertical bed from which a huge skeleton emerges to ...

... Angels and Exiles Clore Studio Upstairs: Royal Opera House This piece is presented as part of the Back Garden Project, brainchild of executive director Michael Kaiser, which provides non-Opera House artists with access to the fabulous new facilities, as well as giving Royal Ballet staffers the chance to flex their administrative muscles. The Royal Ballet-trained, independent ...

... LSI Wakefield In the spacious and comfortable surroundings of the Alverthorpe Club was an act that has become a firm favourite with northern clubland audiences over the past couple of years. LSI, which apparently stands for Love, Sex and Intelligence, is a two-boy, all-singing, all-dancing act based in Derby. The most obvious and striking aspect of their performance is the sheer quality of the ...

... Leader of the Pack Bromley The true-life tale of Elite Greenwich, one of the great songwriters and producers of the sixties, this musical is the story of the sound she helped to create. i-rom numrjie Degmnings Greenwich landed a job as a staff writer at New York's Brill Building, where she teamed up with Jeff Barry, whom she subsequently married, and collaborated with Phil Specter. A score ...

... Gallic panache livens fairy tale Royal Opera House Les Contes D'Hoffmann Offenbach's last opera is back at the Garden in John Schlesinger's now 20-year-old production, which remains lacklustre and dull, offering no insights into the composer's admittedly problematic final thoughts. So, I shall not aeain pick over the bones of inadequacy. However, there is an abun dant life in the work, ...

... Physical perfection Queen Elizabeth Hall DV8-CanWe We Afford This This year's Dance Umbrella gets off to a stunning start with this challenging piece from physical theatre supremos DV8. A programme note rather seriously warns: This production may contain scenes and lan guage of an adult nature. And it does, but company director Lloyd Newson is more than able to convert these effects into ...

... Pilots fail to take flight Riverside Studios TAPS Comedy Showcase Strange that, given the opportunity to show the assembled agents and producers what they are made of, the latest crop of TAPS writers should have chosen to present half-hour comedies that played more like speculative pilots rather than going straight for the funny bone. What there was showed real promise, but was hampered by ...

... Circo para Todos Circus Space This one-off performance, by second and third-year students of the world's first professional circus school for former street children in Cali, Colombia, was presented by British charity Children of the Andes. It was the culmination of a six-week tour, including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and time at the Circus Space. Thus it was as much a celebration as a show ...

... Solo show gets laughs rolling Riverside Studios Issey Ogata The comic monologue appears to have stepped off the nation's laughter merry-go-round, and so the fact that Japan's Issey Ogata has made it into something of an artform comes as a welcome reminder of what we are missing. Like a more accessible yet far crueller Rowan Atkinson, Ogata prowls through seven hideously familiar human ...

... Tosca Royal Opera House With 15 performances spread throughout the season, Tosca heads the popularity stakes in the Royal Opera's 2000/01 schedule. The production's second cast is not quite as starry as the first, and less satisfying as a whole. The principals go through the motions under Jeremy Sutcliffe's direction, but at a deeper level there is a lack of contact between Maria Guleghina's ...