Two of Europe’s hottest choreographers bring their latest shows to Nottingham Playhouse this month - and both have just bagged major awards for their work. But trophy success is one of the few things in common between the beguiling movement and music of HENRI OGUIKE DANCE COMPANY (Tuesday 19 February) and the exuberant tragi-comic storytelling of Fabulous Beast’s JAMES SON OF JAMES, directed by Michael Keegan-Dolan (Thursday 21 – Saturday 23 February). Such quality and diversity is typical of the spring schedule at Nottingham’s leading venue for contemporary dance (Box Office 0115 941 9419 or www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk).
Young Welsh choreographer Henri Oguike recently won of the Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Outstanding Repertoire. On Tuesday 19 February (8pm) HENRI OGUIKE DANCE COMPANY brings to Nottingham Playhouse four pieces from that repertoire, all of them demonstrating the energy, inventiveness and bold theatrical colour which mark his style.
The evening opens with his explosive work for six velvet-clad women Little Red. Then the troupe shares the stage with Iain Ballamy’s live jazz quartet in Green in Blue, a playful and rhythmic piece evoking the mood of high summer. Finally, Oguike’s latest creations Touching All and All Around explore the dancers’ physicality through a series of beautiful solos and duets.
Irrepressible Irish dance company Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre makes its Nottingham debut with JAMES SON OF JAMES from Thursday 21 to Saturday 23 February (8pm), just a month after its founder and director Michael Keegan-Dolan won the prestigious UK National Dance Award for Best Modern Choreography 2007. As much drama as dance, JAMES SON OF JAMES combines dialogue, song, slapstick and choreography to tell the tale of a rural Irish community rocked by the return of a charismatic native son.
James arrives home just too late for his father’s burial. His presence awakes compassion and kindness in the villagers: the local politician and his troubled family, a couple desperate to conceive, a grieving father and daughter, a farmer and a young Eastern European woman . But hope turns sour as James become the victim of local rivalries, jealousies and fear.
Michael Keegan-Dolan has emerged as one of Ireland’s most talented and original young artist - writer, director and choreographer of seven acclaimed productions for Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, including The Bull and a radical re-working of Giselle. JAMES SON OF JAMES is the company’s first-ever UK tour, presented by Dance Touring Partnership: a raucous tale of accidental heroism, hero worship, love, betrayal and revenge, enacted by eleven extraordinary, international performers from Slovakia, Ireland, England, Laos, Nigeria, Tanzania and France. (More details are online at www.fabulousbeasttour.co.uk).
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