Win tickets to a Place Prize final!

On Londonist.com.

I’ll be there on Friday 12 for one of the semis. Can’t wait.

Here comes the Place Prize

2-27 September, Bloomberg cranks up new choreography at the Robin Howard Theatre in another intense, exciting and unpredictable competition. Read about it on Londonist.com.

Spring Loaded – Final Week – Preview on Londonist

I’ll be there for the closing night. Can’t wait to see Green Apples for the first time. And hanging out at the Place is always a pleasure.

Resolution! 2008

Give it a whirl.

Londonist & Londondance review Touch Wood

Opening night: an odd one. Get well soon, Toni & Theo. We need you.

Colin Poole – I need to see more. Not that there’s much more, actually, to see.

Londonist does Touch Wood

Brand new, on the hoof, seat of the pants contemporary dance experimentation at The Place from next week.

Mark Bruce Company

Sea of Bones review on londondance.com.

Sea of Bones

I’ve just written a review of Mark Bruce Company’s performance of “Sea of Bones” at The Place from last Friday. It took me 5 days to be able to think about it coherently because I loved it so much that I went out and got gloriously drunk after the show and could get no critical distance whatsoever. It’s been a while since I went out for a fag at the interval beaming like a loon. Course, it’s not perfect, but I just love his work. I really do and the dancers were exceptional.

Am considering going to Bracknell in October for another dose. Will post link to the review on londondance.com when it’s up.  Read Judith Mackrell’s excellent review here. She got all the mythy stuff that went over my head.

Londonist does Spring Loaded

Here. 

Disappointing sequel syndrome rant

Hofesh Shechter has been getting the hype treatment. Jonzi D ‘bigged him up massive’ back in February when his work “Uprising” appeared in the “Sampled” bill alongside established dance big hitters, Rambert, Random and English National Ballet (let alone the tap dancers) and he went down a storm with his army of men-children tussling and tumbling all over the place. A big, soulful photo in the Metro preview pages yesterday morning heralded a fawning trailer for the first of his 3 big stints in London’s best dance venues; the Place, the Southbank Centre and Sadlers Wells, over the next months. Shechter’s been gifted an incredible commission; to create a new work and develop it for three major yet very different venues over 6 months. Last night’s opener at the Place held a palpable buzz and was absolutely packed with one of the most diverse audiences I’ve ever seen there. Good job then, that he had “Uprising” under his belt and could whack it out as a sure fire crowd pleaser to kick off the night.

“Uprising” is good to watch and a commercial winner. 7 fabulous male dancers filling the Place with seething testosterone. Plenty of aggression, a splodge of tenderness (not too much, mind) and Shechter style leaping, loping and grooving, some headlong dashing round in circles and playful tussling to a home made industrial soundtrack set in a smoky urban wasteland. Sometimes, it’s like a group of dancers just mucking about – a therapeutic back slapping session descends into a full on scrum fight – and Shecter patrols the performance proprietorially. No doubt who’s in charge. “Uprising” doesn’t say a great deal but it’s performed with macho commitment and elan. If the cheeky ending didn’t quite work tonight then it didn’t really matter because the audience was waiting for the main event anyway. Don’t want to peak too soon. Watch an illicit YouTube video of the Sadlers Wells performance here. It gets good around 3 mins in.

“In Your Rooms” begins with a mad Israeli bloke talking about the cosmos and confusion and chaos. He’s mildly amusing and it’s an eccentric start which is swiftly marred by the succession of briefly lit tableaux that emerge from the absolute blackness. A snippet of movement, three women sitting on the floor, 2 people staring at each other… it should probably all be loaded with meaning and emotion but it just gets annoying and starts to irritate the eyes; “get on with it” you think. When it does kick in, Shechter’s world is tremendously influenced and cross referenced to “Uprising” repeating movement and ideas from the original work yet, like in a poorly conceived movie sequel, it’s just not as good. Shechter’s vision is an apocalyptic battleground where people are isolated and disturbed and fail to communicate or even make contact with another punctuated by a grating industrial bleepy soundtrack which intermittently assaults the ears with squeals, rewinds and interference which fundamentally fails to enhance the experience. But he doesn’t seem to have anything to say about this state of affairs… it just is. His lack of intellectual conception for the piece is encapsulated in the moment when one dancer approaches the front of the stage and mournfully holds up a handwritten sign: “Don’t follow leaders” staring emptily into the audience. The gesture’s serious intent is lost behind the cliche (my neighbour collapses into giggles at this point) suddenly it feels like it’s a naive performance for Resolution! rather than the start of a major new professional project.

Why he bothered engaging such classy female dancers as Amy Hollingsworth I can’t imagine – apart from the general kudos of assocation with her excellence – there is little for the women to work with here as they either club together as the guardians of calm and emotion or run like harpies to jump on men’s backs and drag them down in failing desperation. Not the best sexual politics for the day and age. Yet, Shechter does male choreography brilliantly, even if I don’t think it works here. However, it’s a style very personal to Shechter and it feels like he is trying to clone himself and his exact quirks through his dancers rather than creating a new and objective choreographic vocabulary.

Granted, this is work in progress and I hope that the piece is better received in the more austere environment of the Southbank Centre and more fully realised by the time it reaches Sadlers in September as “In Your Rooms” can’t begin to compete with its predecessor and it looks alarmingly like Shecter is a one trick pony for now.