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…
Wayne Parsons Dance – Meeting, Vestige – London
★★★✰✰ Although I haven’t seen Parsons’ work before, I can see very quickly why it’s riveting.
James Finnemore, Alleyne Dance – TERRA, A Night’s Game – London
James Finnemore: TERRA Alleyne Dance: A Night’s Game ★★★✰✰ London, The Place 24 April 2018 www.jamesfinnemore.co.uk www.alleynedance.com For some reason, the intended (or, at least, promoted) order of this double bill was reversed…
Uchenna Dance – The Head Wrap Diaries – London
★★★★✰ Hair is a fraught subject for most women. For black women, the struggle with their locks (braids, weaves, relaxed or natural) can be titanic – getting your hair done can be a day-long ordeal…
Richard Alston Dance Company – Mid Century Modern, Carnaval, Cut and Run – London
★★★★★ It must be tempting to get carried away by sentiment when it comes to celebrating both a 70th birthday and fifty years as a choreographer in a programme that also marks the departure of a special muse.
Tilted Productions – Constructions of Thin Air – London
★★★✰✰ Constructions of Air evocatively suggests our relationship with the past, our own histories, memories and how we make sense of change.
Gallery – Place Resolution 2018: Counterpoint Dance Company in Journeys of Internal Migration
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
Amy Bell – The Forecast – London
★★★★✰ 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.
New Writers on New Dance at Place Resolution 2018 (part 2)
Part 2 features reviews by Emma Boxall, Coral Montejano Cantoral, Emma Iskowitz and Francesca Marotto…
