The Place’s theatre programme for 23 February to 30 March features some of the UK’s most successful touring companies with new work from celebrated choreographers. Following selected performances, new question and answer sessions will give audiences the opportunity to learn more about the work they have seen. The February/March programme also includes creative and collaborative works from students of London Contemporary Dance School.
Following the company’s success with its recent provocative production Heart of Darkness, Tavaziva Dance returns to The Place on Tuesday 23 February 8pm with a fierce new work titled Wild Dog. Propelled by a new cast of performers plus a soundtrack arranged by award-winning Zimbabwean-born choreographer and former Place Prize finalist Bawren Tavaziva, Wild Dog uncovers the beauty and grace of one of Africa’s most endangered species. Inspiration for this new work was close at hand says Bawren: “When I looked at aspects of my culture being eroded and becoming extinct that led me to examine the fate of the wild dogs of Africa, whose very existence is threatened.”
Having taken Edinburgh festival audiences by storm, the award-winning 2FacedDance charge into London on Wednesday 24 February 8pm with its highly charged, gritty work, Still Breathing, choreographed by Artistic Director Tamsin Fitzgerald. Explosive, abstract breaking and masculine vulnerability combine for 60 minutes of unstoppable, seemingly impossible movement.
ACE dance and music’s Switch (Saturday 27 Feb 8pm) draws inspiration from ancient practices and their continuing relevance to modern day living, with a stylistic mix that stretches from Africa, through the Caribbean and Europe across to Japan. Based in a striking monochrome set, this double header is a new collaborative work by ACE’s directors Gail and Ian Parmel with two former Phoenix Dance Company members: Douglas Thorpe for Listen and Andile Sotiya for Switch. ACE blends sophisticated dance, music, projections by Akihiko Kaneko and is performed by a bold cast of six hypnotic dancers.
On Tuesday 2 March 8pm, Retina Dance Company’s four great young male dancers are joined by acclaimed Belgian composer/musician Joris Vanvinckenroye in Antipode, a raw and exhilarating piece of new dance from choreographer Filip Van Huffel. The five performers may share the same stage, but with no shared goals and no fear they collide, caress, fight and play as quirky solos interrupt feisty duets and athletic group work, all set to a live score played on double bass by the composer.
Five years ago, Stan Won't Dance smashed onto the scene and broke all the rules about what theatre and dance should be. Daring to say what is often left unsaid, the company is back from Thursday 4 – Saturday 6 March 8pm with BABEL, its most provocative and hard-hitting piece to date. BABEL unites choreographic mavericks Liam Steel and Rob Tannion with the Whitbread award-winning writer Patrick Neate, whose work spans fiction, journalism and performance poetry. Abrasive, anarchic, honest and uncompromising; nothing and no-one is safe as an all-male cast composed of some of the UK’s finest physical theatre performers collapse the safe ivory towers of political correctness to ask fundamental questions about the Britain in which we live today.
Yael Flexer and Nic Sandiland’s The Living Room (Monday 8 & Tuesday 9 March 8pm) is an intimate dance set in what appears to be the bare bones of a living or rehearsal room. In Flexer’s first work to be shown in London for five years, fast-paced choreography is cut with informal banter and wry humour, as the performers (including Flexer herself) live through another show, which also features live, original music by Karni Postel. This performance is complemented by a pre-show interactive installation Orbital at 7pm in the Founders’ Studio, in which three audience members per showing manipulate a solo dancer who traces a path around a complex system of rotating spaces.
Performing two brand new works, Scotland’s national contemporary dance company, Scottish Dance Theatre, returns for its annual visit to The Place (Thursday 11 – Saturday 13 March 8pm) with a celebration of what it is to be alive in the world today. NQR* is an irreverent inquiry into the idea of normality, revealing the irrepressible eccentricities that defy our attempts to fit in (*Not Quite Right is an acronym formally used in medical records to describe unexplained difference). This work is a three way collaboration co-directed by SDT Artistic Director Janet Smith, Caroline Bowditch and Marc Brew, currently Associate Director Fellow with the company. The Life and times of Girl A by Ben Duke of Lost Dog concerns a woman who is trying to tell us something vitally important about what is happening right now. What she needs is a film crew and a financier; what she's got is a stage and some dancers.
Thursday 18 & Friday 19 March 8pm offer up free evenings of work from London Contemporary Dance School postgraduate students plus a preview of EDge 10, the postgraduate performance company, prior to touring. The 2010 EDge repertory includes new work by choreographers Wally Cardona, Rick Nodine and Frauke Requardt, plus the shorter Leche Commissions from choreographers Darren Ellis, Lucy Suggate and Nicholas Quinn.
From Tuesday 23 – Friday 26 March 8pm the Robin Howard Dance Theatre plays host to London Contemporary Dance School’s Collaborations projects, run jointly with Wimbledon College of Art and Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Now running successfully for over ten years, third year choreographers are matched with third year designers, while in a simultaneous project, third year choreographers are paired with postgraduate composers. An intensive week of workshops challenge choreographers, designers and composers to solve creative problems, exchange ideas and form collaborative partnerships. The design work ranges from large scale constructions to transformative uses of the theatre itself, while live music ranges from traditional scoring to innovative electronics. The design collaboration performances are on 23 and 24 March, while the music collaborations can be seen on the 25 and 26 of March. Tickets are free.
Verve is the postgraduate performance company of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. With dancers fresh from intensive technical training at some of Europe’s leading conservatoires, Verve is well known for passionate, engaging performances. On Saturday 27 March 8pm the company presents invigorating work by choreographers Michael Schumacher, Luis Lara Malvacías, David Zambrano, Laïla Diallo and Kathinka Walter, performed by dancers who will go on to work with some of the UK’s most highly regarded dance companies.
Rayne Choreographic Fellow Kate Flatt makes a welcome return to The Place after many years with Soul Play (Tuesday 30 March), a powerful piece of dance-theatre for one actor (Sam Curtis) and one dancer (Joy Constantinides), which tells the intimate, contemporary story of a young man's personal journey following his mysterious and untimely death. At times bleak, at others funny and tender, Soul Play draws upon an Eastern European street theatre tradition in an effortless fusion of text and movement. The creative team includes writer Anna Reynolds and award-winning designer Chloe Lamford.
For additional information please contact Richard Thompson, Marketing Manager at The Place on 020 7121 1023 or via email at .