The Place

Six performances are part of Dance Umbrella, returning at The Place in its 33rd season, including Work Place artist Rosemary Lee’s Square Dances, a major commission performed across four squares in central London by over 200 dancers (Sat 8 & Sun 9 October).

Celebrating works from both up and coming and established artists, this year’s Dance Umbrella explores the influence that seminal works from the past have on younger artists, with a close look at the work of Richard Alston. The legendary choreographer has a lifelong relationship with the festival, having performed in the first edition back in 1978. Two main events will highlight the focus on Alston. Alston Takes Cover, (Wed 19 to Sat 22 October, 7pm) is a unique project where young choreographers Rachel Lopez de La Nieta, and Work Place artists Moreno Solinas, Igor Urzelai, and Tony Adigun will reinterpret Alston’s iconic Wildlife (1983), with their own distinctive compositions, performed by dancers from EDge, London Contemporary Dance School’s postgraduate performance company. This will be followed by Richard Alston At Home (Wed 19 to Sat 22 October, 8pm), a multiple bill including a new Alston piece for the full company, set to Mozart’s Piano Sonata No.15, a collage of extracts from early Alston works, including Wildlife (1983), Rainbow Ripples (1980), Still Moving Still (1969) and Something To Do (1969). The programme is completed by a unique revival of Robert Cohan’s sextet, In Memory, made for London Contemporary Dance Theatre in 1989, and the world premiere of a new solo, entitled Other Than I, by Martin Lawrance.

Rambert Dance Company (Tue 11 & Wed 12 October) returns to The Place for the first time in two years with Season of new choreography 2011, featuring previously unseen works created by six of its versatile dancers, and performed to live music. Dance Umbrella’s programme continues with Caterina Sagna’s UK premiere of Basso Ostinato (Fri 15 & Sat 15 October), a refreshingly honest and hilarious take on human foibles, in the shape of three drunken friends around a table. Benoit Lachambre and Louise Lecavalier’s Is You Me (Tue 25 & Wed 26 October) is a feast of colourful tableau of live drawings and projections accompanied by co-creator Laurent Goldring’s masterful video soundscapes.

Brief Encounters, Dance Umbrella’s short series of pre-show performances, returns with Mathurin Bolze and Hedi Thabet’s Ali, (Fri 28 & Sat 29 October, 7pm) a humorous duet celebrating companionship, before the festival’s conclusion with a double bill by South African choreographers Nelisiwe Xaba and Mamela Nyamza’s (Fri 28 & Sat 29 October, 8pm), featuring Xaba’s They Look At Me and That’s All they Think, an audio-visual homage to Sarah Baartman, also known as the Hottentot Venus; and Hatched, Nyamza’s passionate autobiographical recount, juxtaposing Western balletic conventions, and African traditional forms.

2Faced Dance’s Artistic Director Tamsin Fizgerald, with choreographer Tom Dale, and Place Prize finalist Freddie Opoku-Addaie, returns with a triple bill of darkly explosive new break-informed works, In the Dust, on the theme of decay and destruction (Mon 31 Oct & Tue 1 Nov), followed by Reel Lives, a collection of inspirational moments on film, featuring, on this occasion, the favourite screen-scenes of choreographer Akram Khan, in conversation with Aerowaves Director John Ashford.

New Art Club’s Tom Roden and Pete Shenton will present Big Bag of Boom (Fri 4 Nov), a mash-up of the cleverest tricks, brilliant dances, and hilarious set pieces from a decade of award-winning show. Darshan Singh Bhuller’s latest dance theatre piece Caravaggio: Exile and Death, arrives next at The Place (Wed 8 to Sat 12 Nov). Inspired by the troubled life of 17th century master painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Bhuller takes the audience on one man’s search for forgiveness and redemption.

Dance iconoclast Wendy Houstoun presents 50 ACTS (Tue 15 Nov),  an intimate and affecting retaliation against the world based upon manifestos, songs, apologies and errors, random acts, small dances and big ideas – and much, much more; followed by Reckless Sleepers, presenting Schrödinger, (Thu 17 to Sat 19 Sept) a visually mesmerising performance inspired by 1933 Nobel Prize Erwin Schrödinger, in which questions and answer, chaos and order are interchangeable, and all the rules and conventions are torn up, from mathematics to emotions.

In I wish I could believe you (Tue 22 & Wed 23 Nov), Philippe Saire Cie’s final instalment of his ambivalent trilogy on glamour and entertainment, five dancers courageously try to restore the show’s broken spell with acrobatics, hesitant tap dancing, clumsily executed magic tricks and flights of unsettling fantasy, in a compelling dance theatre performance by one of the longest-standing Swiss companies.  In the same week, bgroup takes to the scenes The Lessening of Difference, (Fri 25 & Sat 26 Nov), in which two-time Place Prize semi-finalist and Jerwood award-winning choreographer Ben Wright, in collaboration with author David Charles Manners, reflects on the concept of intimacy.  

One of Ireland’s leading independent choreographers, Fearghus O’ Conchuir, will take to the Place’s stage Tabernacle (Tue 29 Nov), a probing dance piece featuring dancer Matthew Morris, investigating the authority, control and influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland, with a considered and dynamic look to the changing attitude to religion.

The Place Theatre bar will be transformed by Timberlina and Hey Baylen’s The Big Bingo Show (Wed 30 Nov) for a night of riotous rock ’n’ roll hilarity for adults, with impromptu dance routines, topical interventions, special guests, and a great soundtrack, before the Autumn Season comes to an end with Fresh, a night of outstanding dance with and for young people (Sat 3 Dec), bringing together some of the UK’s most dynamic youth and professional dance companies, including Hofesh Shechter Company and Avant Garde Dance.

Contacts
For further information, use of images, interviews:
The Place Communication Office
Marta Bogna, Press and Media Manager
020 7121 1025/