Evelyn Hart
Zizi Jeanmaire
Akram Khan
Johan Kobborg
Alfredo Kraus
Ulyana Lopatkina
Wayne McGregor
Russell Maliphant
Alicia Markova
Peter Martins
Mark Morris
Irek Mukhamedov
Rudolf Nureyev
Natalia Osipova
Maya Plisetskaya
Sergei Polunin
Yvonne Rainer
Alexei Ratmansky
Tamara Rojo
Mstislav Rostropovich
Rodion Shchedrin
Lynn Seymour
Twyla Tharp
Ninette de Valois
Ivan Vasiliev
Vladimir Vasiliev
Christopher Wheeldon
Igor Zelensky
ISMENE BROWN About
THIS SITE
is a selective filing cabinet of 30 years of my dance criticism & arts journalism published in The Daily & Sunday Telegraph from 1992, The Arts Desk from 2009, The Spectator 2014-16, and other publications where online, and I hope it's of occasional historical interest. It consists of reviews and previews of shows that seemed significant above the usual run (including premieres of some now-famous events), commentaries on issues, and interviews with major performers.
If you want to republish or extract anything, kindly email me.
BACKGROUND
I am a Soviet history scholar and arts journalist of news background and musical training. I have been a national newspaper subeditor, a regional newspaper editor, a local politics news reporter, a BBC and commercial radio news presenter, and a classical music radio presenter. I was the Daily Telegraph's dance critic for 15 years (1993-2008) and their dance obituarist to this day, and The Spectator ’s dance critic for two years (2014-16). In 2009 I designed, launched and site-managed the award-winning critics’ site The Arts Desk (named Best Specialist Journalism Site in the 2012 Online Media Awards), was a director 2009-2012, and remain an occasional reviewer.
I trained as a pianist, singer and violist at the Royal College of Music, London (ARCM) and gained an MA in Russian Studies at University College, London in 2014. In 2021 I was awarded the degree of DPhil at Oxford University for my thesis on the Soviet politician and Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva, on whom I continue to work as an academic.
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*Background pic: Grand Theatre, Havana
I've interviewed
Carlos Acosta
Adam Adassinsky
Alicia Alonso
Altynai Asylmuratova
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Yuri Bashmet
Pina Bausch
Maurice Béjart
Matthew Bourne
Buster Brown
Trisha Brown
Jonathan Burrows
Darcey Bussell
Michael Clark
Alina Cojocaru
Merce Cunningham
Lucas Debargue
Anthony Dowell
Mats Ek
Suzanne Farrell
Michael Flatley
William Forsythe
Javier de Frutos
Antonio Gades
Valery Gergiev
Angela Gheorghiu
Sylvie Guillem