The Place

Richard Alston Dance Company’s Autumn 2011 tour will include performances in London, as part of Dance Umbrella, and in New York, at the Fall For Dance festival, where the company will perform Alston’s contemporary classic ROUGHCUT, dancing for the first time at City Center.

The tour’s programme includes four premieres: Alston’s UNFINISHED BUSINESS and EARLY DAYS, Martin Lawrance’s OTHER THAN I, and a company premiere of Robert Cohan’s IN MEMORY. Lawrance’s LIE OF THE LAND, a highlight of the 2010 season, completes the programme, along with ROUGHCUT.

Alston’s UNFINISHED BUSINESS is danced to the beautiful, lucid and flowing music of Mozart – the two movements of an unfinished piano sonata, Opus K533. To these, Alston has added an extraordinary arrangement of Mozart’s Gigue in D, by the Italian virtuoso Federico Busoni, creating a third movement and bringing things to a rousing close.

A young choreographer needs time to find his true voice, so early experiments are a chance to spot future developments, particularly when seen retrospectively. Especially for Dance Umbrella, Alston revisits his very early work and brings it back to The Place, where it all started. EARLY DAYS is a collage of extracts covering the period from SOMETHING TO DO, made in 1969, when The Place first opened, up to WILDLIFE, created for Ballet Rambert in 1983.

IN MEMORY was one of the last pieces choreographed by Robert Cohan before he left London Contemporary Dance Theatre, the company he founded and directed for over twenty years. An intimate and quietly intense piece for six dancers, IN MEMORY, revived for the first time, is Cohan at his most succinct and powerful. The music he has chosen for this revival is Hindemith’s spare and expressive Sonata for unaccompanied viola.

OTHER THAN I, a new solo choreographed by Martin Lawrance, will be danced to the music of Francois Couperin.

ROUGHCUT is danced to Steve Reich’s shimmering New York Counterpoint and Electric Counterpoint for clarinet and guitar. A euphoric display of pure energy, made on Rambert Dance Company in 1990, ROUGHCUT has only rarely been revived.
In LIE OF THE LAND, the sharp sweetness of Ned Rorem’s writing for string quartet has taken Martin Lawrance into new territory. Lyrical yet urgent dancing charts the lie of the land in ever restless and searching mood changes.

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