This month Nottingham Playhouse plays host to two of the UK’s most exciting young dance companies: RUSSELL MALIPHANT COMPANY on Tuesday 16 October at 8pm, and a debut appearance on the Playhouse stage for the Nottingham-based NEW ENGLISH CONTEMPORARY BALLET on Wednesday 24 October at 7.30pm (Box Office: 0115 941 9419 or www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk).
Russell Maliphant has become one of our most renowned choreographers and his company, founded in 1996, explores the marriage of music, light and movement with a style that is all its own. In particular, Maliphant’s twelve-year collaboration with pioneering lighting designer Michael Hulls conjures a succession of stunning and dynamic stage images. This one-off performance in Nottingham is sandwiched between dates in France and South Korea. Among the three works to be performed on Tuesday 16 October are the award-winning Push, a duet in which sensuality and danger, strength and delicacy are perfectly balanced, and Flux, a solo for the virtuoso Cuban dancer Alexander Varona.
On Wednesday 24 October it is the turn of New English Contemporary Ballet to grace the Playhouse stage. Launched just last year under the artistic directorship of Niall McMahon, the company won critical acclaim in its inaugural season for its sparkling fusion of classical virtuosity and contemporary edge.
Connected to Nottingham University and operating out of Nottingham’s Djanogly City Academy, NECB represents a major new artistic ambassador for the city and region. The expanded company of ten dancers from around the world is guaranteed to delight audiences with its versatility and virtuosity in its 2007 tour programme, a mixed bill of new works as exciting as they are varied.
The UK premiere of Danses Galantes by the internationally acclaimed choreographer and Director of Ballet Basel Richard Wherlock brings classical ballet bang up to date, whilst a new commission from the French choreographer Patrick Delcroix, whose recent work for Nederlands Dans Theater has been acclaimed across Europe, infuses the programme with a more purely contemporary flavour.
At the heart of the programme is Blood and Flesh, commissioned from David Fielding, an up-and-coming young British choreographer whose work is attracting international attention. Pulling no punches in its treatment of peer pressure and urban violence, this is a morality tale for our times, as West Side Story was for its own era, and redefines what ballet can be.
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