Echoes of the Studio
In rehearsal, Dionne Figgins is exacting. She has an eagle eye as she runs choreography in short sections, making sure each detail is accounted for.
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World-class review of ballet and dance.
How do dancers with disabilities navigate space? Who is defining space for disabled dancers? What are the objects that obstruct, block and blur? How do we define choreography within the framework of disability? Candoco Dance Company are, as ever, refining and redefining what it is to move in space, and how dancers of various abilities navigate this in their practice. They ask the questions that make other people shy away, because society is still not comfortable with disability. As an arts critic recently diagnosed with a disability, I became increasingly aware during lockdown of how I interact with day to day chores, the wobbly steps I take, and often see how many people try to walk through me as if I am invisible—they would rather I didn't exist. So these two short dance films resonated powerfully for me.
Welly O'Brien in Cuckoo directed by Caroline Darbyshire and Sophie de Oliveira Barata of the Alternative Limb Project
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In rehearsal, Dionne Figgins is exacting. She has an eagle eye as she runs choreography in short sections, making sure each detail is accounted for.
FREE ARTICLEWhere do you go when you’re at the theatre? Are you looking for escape or confrontation? Do you want to weep for the world or tap your toe? In their latest tour to London for A Festival of Korean Dance, Korea National Contemporary Dance Company straddles somewhere in the middle.
Continue ReadingAround the corner from the crowds, billboards, Bubba Gump Shrimp and the Hard Rock Cafe, one can now find a decidedly more refined respite in the midst of midtown Manhattan.
Continue ReadingSan Francisco Ballet delivers one of the most intense home seasons in the dance world, a scheduling crucible that artistic director Tamara Rojo, in her four years of leadership, has tried to change without success.
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