"Actor: The Nederlands Dans Theater"

• Peter And The Wolf / L'Enfant Et Les Sortileges | DVD | (25/09/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  It was a happy idea to couple the Royal Ballet School production of Peter and the Wolf with the Netherlands Dance Theatre's L'enfant et les sortiléges, for in each story the boy is the protagonist, in one instance leading a wolf hunt and in the other wreaking revenge on his toys after his mother has locked him in his room to finish his homework. Neither work in their final form was conceived for dancing: the Prokofiev comes from the concert hall and the Ravel from the opera house. Colette, the authoress of Gigi penned the story of L'enfant et les sortil&ecute;ges, which is related here in an introduction by the choreographer Jiri Kylian with charm and a nod back at his own childhood pranks. Viewers coming to this dance version of the opera for the first time maybe be surprised that Ravel composed the boy's role for a girl and a rather buxom one in this instance. The somewhat gloomy, heavily embroidered production misses no opportunity in bringing to life the toys in the boy's room or the animals in the garden that turn on him in retribution. In conclusion as an act of compassion of binding the paw of an injured squirrel, the boy and the animal kingdom are reconciled in music of a truly sublime nature. Lorin Maazel conducts Ravel's sophisticated and witty score with its translucent vocal lines with the affection for which he has long been renowned. In marked contrast to that production, Peter and the Wolf is set against a plain backdrop with one prop, a slice of carved tree trunk centre stage. Anthony Dowell narrates and also dances the role of the Grandfather with aplomb. In each instance a musical instrument represents a character. The choreographer Matthew Hart marshals his small group of dancers, duck, cat, bird and wolf, with imagination and dexterity. David Johnson as Peter (represented by the full orchestra) gives a splendid performance, boyish and graceful, making a further excellent advertisement for schoolboys considering dancing as a career in the wake of Billy Elliot. A stylish presented and well contrasted double bill. --Adrian Edwards

• Black And White Ballet | DVD | (18/07/2000) from £33.73   |  Saving you £-8.74 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Black and White Ballet is a treat for all fans of contemporary dance. The Nederlands Dans Theater's reputation is formidable in any event, but there's also a tradition in the Netherlands of producing modern dance for television and video media with enormous expertise, as owners of the superb Springdance VHS collections will testify. The advent of DVD has of course upped the ante considerably in terms of detail and overall production values, with this disc being a fine example of what can be achieved. The stark, monochromatic staging of this sequence of dance pieces is overlaid by a choice of music which encompasses Mozart, Bach and Webern, but it's the opening item, set to the first part of Steve Reich's Drumming, which is the most compelling, displaying as it does the power of dance to extrapolate from music rather than just accompany it. In terms of features, the disc is pretty spartan, with a stereo-only soundtrack and no extra features worthy of the name, but the overall result is nevertheless highly recommended.--Roger Thomas

• L'Histoire Du Soldat | DVD | (21/11/2000) from £21.58   |  Saving you £-3.59 (-20.00%)   |  RRP £17.99

  In Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale, the hero believes he has cheated the devil and lives to regret his cleverness. The aftermath of the First World War had left the composer convinced of an aesthetic of austerity, so here he replaces his huge pre-war scores with the Ballet Russes with a few dancers, a few instruments and narrators. The score, brilliantly played, includes a lot of genre dances--a tango, a waltz, a ragtime--as well as fragmentary jagged marches and love scenes that drift with deliberate grace into the further reaches of tonality. Kylian's choreography involves a rather larger cast than most--many of the dance numbers are performed as a "divertissement" for the soldier and his princess--and some slightly corny staging: at the end, dragged off to Hell, the soldier disappears into a red dry-ice mist. None the less, this version is superbly danced, with a real sense of menace, moments of fairytale beauty and passionately cynical flippantness. The DVD has menus and subtitles in English, French, German and Spanish, and contains trailers for other ArtHaus releases. --Roz Kaveney

• Kaguyahime | DVD | (26/01/2001) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-1.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Kaguyahime is one of Japan's oldest fairy-tales: the story of the moon princess who descends to Earth and is cared for by the family of an old bamboo cutter her luminous is beauty meant to spread peace and happiness but instead the rivalry her heavenly presence provokes results in war. Maki Ishii's music and the choreography of Jiri Kylian combine in this merging of Western and Japanese traditions.