Seeta Patel – The Rite of Spring, Dance Dialogues – London
★★★✰✰ Rite of Spring: Through the perspective of a South Asian gaze, the brutality and finality of the original ballet’s pagan sacrifice is tempered by a rich spirituality and the optimistic suggestion of an after-life. It’s still scary but less barbaric.
Fuel and Encounter – The Kids Are Alright – London
★★✰✰✰ The main story revolved around bereaved parents who had lost their ten-year old daughter, Sophie, on a daytrip to the Natural History Museum, in London….
Alleyne Dance – The Other Side of Me, A Night’s Game – London
★★★★✰ Both sisters were competitive athletes before turning to dance and catching a flying chair is just one of many signs of their mutual sporting prowess…
Corali Dance Company with Thick & Tight – Technicolour Everyday bill – London
★★★✰✰ Even as I leave the show not really having understood every bit of it, I’m touched by the multi-skilled performers and their unforced honesty.
Woman SRSLY – Takeover: Wildlife in Strange Waters – London
★★★✰✰ Woman SRSLY’s feminist energy exploded all over the Place last Thursday. The foyer and bar area were transformed into a colourful pink fun-fair.
Vincent Dance Theatre – Virgin Territory Film Installation – Margate
★★★★✰ Vincent Dance Theatre’s visceral and timely response to how social media is wrecking our children, hypersexualising them and stealing their childhood co-opts the very technology that it warns us about.
James Cousins Company – Epilogues bill of duets – London
★★★★✰ Cousins and company both surprise and stir us.
5 Questions to Choreographer James Cousins about his new Touring Programme of Duets – Epilogues
James Cousins is unusually touring a bill of three contrasting duets – called Epilogues it has a London run at The Place from 6-8 March 2019.
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.
