Uchenna Dance – Hansel & Gretel – London
★★★✰✰ Vicki Igbokwe’s bold dance retelling of the classic fairytale Hansel and Gretel has a sense of playfulness at its heart, and something of a political message for adults to chew on too.
Memorable Performances of 2018 – London
Semperoper Ballett Dresden were another new visitor in the summer, with a programme of Forsythe works, some not seen here before. But Forsythe is a theme this year in himself.
Umanoove / Didy Veldman – The Knot – London
★★★★✰ Dutch choreographer Didy Veldman has picked a rich subject to mine in The Knot: marriage in all its starry-eyed, nerve-wracking, life-altering glory.
James Wilton Dance – The Storm – London
★★★✰✰ The Storm grapples with feeling low, becoming depressed and the tempest like outbursts which can follow.
Andrea Costanzo Martini and Aris Papadopoulos / Martha Pasakopoulou – Aerowaves 2bill – London
★★★✰✰ After all these years, here is evidence – if any were needed – that the Aerowaves experiment continues to showcase great talent.
Eddie Nixon, new Artistic Director of The Place
Eddie Nixon has just been appointed as The Place’s Artistic Director – Graham Watts is first to interview him about his new role and plans…
Tom Dale Company – I Infinite – London
★★★✰✰ Dale and his collaborators have succeeded in creating a highly unusual ambience for dance; a place of quiet reflection and arresting imagery…
Igor and Moreno – Idiot-Syncrasy – London
★★★✰✰ The clue is in the title. Although there is a small section of partnered dance towards the end, this is about conjoined peculiarity…
Seeta Patel – Not Today’s Yesterday – London
★★★✰✰ This is a sincere and deeply felt attempt to show us how history gets rewritten to demonise some and exalt others.
Avant Garde Dance – Fagin’s Twist – London
★★★★✰ Tony Adigun’s smart street-dance reimagining of Dickens’s Oliver Twist switches the focus of the tale…
Shane Shambhu / Altered Skin – Confessions of a Cockney Temple Dancer – London
★★★✰✰ It’s easy to warm to Shane Shambhu and to laugh along with him, but though the journey was entertaining it doesn’t seem to reach an entirely clear conclusion.
Carlos Acosta – Dancer, Directer, Choreographer: ‘I am a man on a mission – I always have been’
“That’s what it’s always been about for me – the necessity to connect with an audience and express myself.”
5 Questions to Seeta Patel about her latest work – Not Today’s Yesterday
Seeta Patel is about to tour the UK with her latest one-woman dance theatre work, “Not Today’s Yesterday” – it’s about the “whitewashing of history” and we wanted to know more…
Sarah Blanc – My Feminist Boner – London
★★★✰✰ 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.
Splayed Festival with Florence Peake and Eve Stainton, Sheena McGrandles, Hilde Ingeborg Sandvold – London
★★★✰✰ 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.
Antonia Grove / Probe – Now You See It – London
★★★★✰ This hour-long solo was a tour de force for a charismatic performer, bearing her soul in a courageous, largely autobiographical account of an upbringing in which there were five simultaneous conversations going on at every mealtime.
An Evening with Namron – From Asphalt to Maple Wood
For around 80 minutes, Namron entertained his audience, largely comprising past and present luminaries of London contemporary dance, with stories and reminiscences, often breaking into movement, before finishing with a brief question & answer session…
Festival of Korean Dance – Jinyeob Cha X Vakki and Lyon Eun KWON – London
★★★★✰ Two works by up-and-coming female Korean choreographers hint at South Korea’s progressive and rich dance culture.
National Dance Company Wales – Folk, Atalay, Tundra – London
★★★★✰ NDCW comprises a rich mix of performers, collectively hailing from six countries (although, surprisingly, none appear to have any Welsh heritage). What is even more surprising is that all bar one have joined in the past nine months…
