A few weeks before Easter, I was struck down with a horrible, unrelenting bout of flu. I was bed-bound for the first three days, sleeping for upwards of 18 hours of the day, only waking up when the painkillers ceased working. I drank pints upon pints of squash, all the variations of tea and honey [...]
Category: Blog Post
Circus: Dance or not?
When I requested tickets for Circusfest 2014 at London's Roundhouse, I was working on the basis that I'd reviewed some circus in the Mime Festival earlier in the year, and though not strictly dance, circus seems physical and choreographed enough that it might just fit in... In my opinion, circus is just on the brink [...]
Creative chaos: madness or inspiration?
I found the uncontrollable, indescribable madness of James Thierrée’s Compagnie du Hanneton absolutely, bafflingly inspiring. I couldn't put my finger on why chaos would make me want to create, but perhaps Thierrée’s ability to acknowledge the chaos, to let it flourish without reigning in the madness and put that on stage with some semblance of [...]
Can you only write about what you know?
Who gives us the right to an opinion? However informed we are (there's quite a range of knowledge levels on the spectrum from no prior awareness at all to "I've got a PhD and written several books on the subject"), we are entitled to our individual opinions. One can always claim to be an authority [...]
The dark and ephemeral world of Shadowland
The ephemeral world of Pilobolus: Shadowland in London In Shadowland, Pilobolus create a vast and varied imaginative landscape, through which we follow a young girl on the brink of growing up. On a rare visit to London, this American dance theatre group stunned audiences at the Peacock Theatre on their opening nights earlier this week. [...]
Getting down and dirty with VDT
Everything in Charlotte Vincent's Motherland seems deliberately challenging, to the point it is almost stubbornly confrontational. Women of the World: Vincent Dance Theatre's Motherland Aggressively sexual, full-frontally experimental and self-consciously provocative, Vincent Dance Theatre’s Motherland dirtied the stage at the Southbank Centre on 9th March 2014 as part of the WOW (Women of the World) [...]
Is casual racism ok if it’s making a valid point?
I'm in two minds about this question. I'm the kind of lighthearted person who doesn't take things too personally, and, having experienced many different manifestations of racism on my travels around the world - from having "white" shouted at me in Uganda to having my skin-tone admired in Korea - I generally tend to believe [...]
Cloud Gate’s contemporary pastiche of traditional religious practice
A lone voice rings out in an ancient Taiwanese ritual chant, Greeting the Gods, as a businessman carries an oversized briefcase past a pool full of lotus blooms. A circle of white-clad Celebrants sit with backs poker-straight and whip bamboo sticks against the floor while a female Shaman dances herself into an ecstatic frenzy. She [...]
Valentine’s Day… (this is not a rant)
This Valentines Day, I had planned an evening at home with the people that I love, but my evening soon went tits-up when we realised we couldn’t find the cat. Her owner, who had just received her engagement ring in the post and was heading out to show it to her fiancé who hadn't seen [...]
Hubert Essakow’s IGNIS at The Print Room, Notting Hill
Together on the dance floor, the three dancers sway lithely, snaking around one another, curving and arching their spines, alternately wavering and burning intensely. Kestelman watches Kela – her own, younger self or a misremembered memory of herself? – dance with the two men as feelings are sparked and a relationship is kindled. Their fun, [...]
Zhēn de Gender 