★★★★✰ Sidi Larbi Cherkaouis’s work is full of surprises. Icon, first premiered in 2016 is another fruitful collaboration between Anthony Gormley and Cherkaoui in which clay moulds both the theme and the dancers.
Author - Josephine Leask
★★★✰✰ Rosie Kay’s MK Ultra is an ambitious project which tackles complex thematic sources - conspiracy theories, brain washing and mind-control, not to mention myths about secret societies such as the Illuminati...
★★★★✰ Overshadowed by the atrocities of WWI, which is commemorated loudly and frequently, the killer Spanish Flu, which killed an estimated 50-100 million people, is at last fittingly acknowledged on its 100th anniversary in Shobana Jeyasingh’s work Contagion.
★★★★✰ One of the highlights of Dance Umbrella’s 40th anniversary was watching 200 women perform Everything that Rises Must Dance...
Hauptaktion at London’s Collisions Festival 2018 – Examing cultural appropriation and Minstrel shows
Thoughtful report about thoughtful work that probes and presents how the dance of yesterday and today borrows and distorts the culture of others. Makes you think!
★★★✰✰ Blanc shares her struggles with dieting, exercise regimes and the pressure to look perfect to the point where she has an epiphany which she calls her feminist boner.
★★★★✰ Directed by Kenrick ‘H20’ Sandy and Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante, the return to the Barbican of Blak Whyte Gray, is again a triumph.
Part lecture and panel discussion, part documentary screening and part performance "Vogue: The Unlimited House of Krip" was a good introduction to voguing culture, presented as part of the Southbank's Unlimited festival and built around the deaf and disabled dancers that form the House of Krip.
★★★✰✰ Rarely seen in London apart from performances at Breakin’ Convention, French choreographer Pierre Rigal brings something different to the hip-hop dance theatre scene with Scandale.
★★★✰✰ What I loved about it was that none of the acts fitted into neat categories but spilled out through porous art boundaries.
East London Dance, Hofesh Shechter Company and LIFT Festival East Wall: Storm the Tower ★★★★✰ London, Tower of London eastwall.org www.hofesh.co.uk www.liftfestival.com www.eastlondondance.org Sitting outside on a balmy summer evening in London, watching the performances of East Wall unfold against the backdrop of the imposing Tower of London is a rare treat. Life gets even better when the two...
★★✰✰✰ Waierstall explores themes of extinction through the impact of humans on the earth’s geology and ecosystems. While thematically and visually intriguing, And here we meet lacks coherence...
★★★★✰ Rhiannon Faith’s hard-hitting show coats the horrors of domestic violence in the saccharine sweetness of a girly party.
★★★✰✰ Curated by dance artist Amy Bell, Splayed seeks to mess up stereotypical, heterosexual representations of the female body and replace them with other dynamic alternatives.
★★★★✰ Two works by up-and-coming female Korean choreographers hint at South Korea’s progressive and rich dance culture.
★★★✰✰ Although I haven’t seen Parsons’ work before, I can see very quickly why it’s riveting.
★★★✰✰ Identity is a celebration of East London’s diverse creativity - a dazzling clash of fashion, dance and music... and featuring Houston Dance Collective, Avant Garde Dance Company, House of Absolute, & Rugged Estate.
★★★✰✰ About Us is a collection of personal stories and political musings communicated through a multidisciplinary framework of movement, music, singing, text and film and performed by an equally eclectic group of multigenerational artists.
★★★✰✰ Constructions of Air evocatively suggests our relationship with the past, our own histories, memories and how we make sense of change.
★★★★✰ Bell’s brave work although addressing us all in our fluctuating states of being, speaks out especially to queer women, non-binary and trans people.