Subscribe
Search
Worldwide
Phoenix Dance Theatre
© Brian Slater
© Brian Slater

Phoenix Dance Theatre – on the rise

The Leeds company is serving up a feast. Their director, Sharon Watson, tells us more

Advertising
In its 32-year history, Leeds-based Phoenix Dance Theatre has been through more regenerations than Doctor Who. Beginning as an all-male black dance group, first they let women in, then became multicultural, then refocused on theatrical dance, then the company was taken over by choreographer Javier De Frutos, mainly as a vehicle for his own work. In 2009, former dancer Sharon Watson took up the reins. Has she tamed this flighty beast?

Watson came aiming to clarify the company’s identity and to showcase ‘the best of contemporary dance’. So far, she’s been true to her word. On its latest tour, the small, athletic company is performing work ranging from the beautiful abstraction of Richard Alston to an intense martial arts-inspired solo by Jose Agudo.
Contemporary dance isn’t only one language, says Watson, and she likens her programme to a ‘four-course meal’. Meaning that even if one dish isn’t to your taste, you’ll find something that you like. Having said that, palatable isn’t what she’s always going for. ‘It’s not about creating “nice” work,’ says Watson.

‘It’s about creating something that really does push the dancers and choreographers, physically and mentally.’ The London programme includes a new piece made by Watson herself called ‘Repetition of Change’, inspired by the structures of DNA. It has been a huge project for her. ‘It was a bloody challenge,’ she laughs. ‘ I can’t believe I got through it. But yesterday we had a scientist in the audience who said, “Oh my God, I can see the membrane!” And I thought: You got it!’

More dance features

Fifteen dance shows we're excited to see in London in 2015

  • Dance
Fifteen dance shows we're excited to see in London in 2015
Fifteen dance shows we're excited to see in London in 2015
London's line-up of dance shows is set to be spectacular in 2015. Here are our highlights for the year ahead More dance features Christmas dance shows in London One guaranteed way to feel festive this Christmas is by seeing some particularly twinkly toes taking to the London stage The best dance shows this month Take your pick from the highlights of the London dance scene this month Rambert's new digs Rambert dance company has a new home on the South Bank. Why not drop by? A dance studio that you can’t jump up and down in and one working shower for 22 people isn’t really what the country’s best dancers deserve, but that’s what Rambert dance company has been living with at its Chiswick HQ. Aside from one of the studios not being able to withstand bouncing bodies, the building they’ve been based in for 40 years was too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter and very cramped. It’s just as well that a long-planned, £19.6 million project to build the company a new home has finally come to fruition. Standing behind the National Theatre on the South Bank, Rambert’s new base opens next week with a fanfare and a fortnight of free public events. It’s definitely worth having a look around. The concrete block of a building (very South Bank) by Allies & Morrison architects is smartly minimal and has a vast main studio – as big as the stage at Sadler’s Wells theatre. It also has a lot of showers. More dance features Behind the scenes with the
Read more
Advertising

Rambert's new digs

  • Dance
Rambert dance company has a new home on the South Bank. Why not drop by? A dance studio that you can’t jump up and down in and one working shower for 22 people isn’t really what the country’s best dancers deserve, but that’s what Rambert dance company has been living with at its Chiswick HQ. Aside from one of the studios not being able to withstand bouncing bodies, the building they’ve been based in for 40 years was too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter and very cramped. It’s just as well that a long-planned, £19.6 million project to build the company a new home has finally come to fruition. Standing behind the National Theatre on the South Bank, Rambert’s new base opens next week with a fanfare and a fortnight of free public events. It’s definitely worth having a look around. The concrete block of a building (very South Bank) by Allies & Morrison architects is smartly minimal and has a vast main studio – as big as the stage at Sadler’s Wells theatre. It also has a lot of showers. More dance features Behind the scenes with the Royal Ballet We went on an exclusive tour of the Royal Opera House to meet some of the country's most talented dancers Rambert's new digs Rambert dance company has a new home on the South Bank. Why not drop by? Dancing queens: Candoco at Duckie Dance company Candoco is taking up residence at gay club Duckie. We're bracing ourselves London's best ballroom dancing lessons Find the best places to sweep across the dan
Read more
Advertising

Ten years in British hip hop

  • Music
Ten years in British hip hop
Ten years in British hip hop
As hip hop dance festival Breakin’ Convention reaches its tenth year, we cast an eye over a decade’s worth of landmark moments This May, Breakin’ Convention stages its tenth festival dedicated to the art of hip hop dance. Hip hop culture arrived in London in the early ’80s, but the last decade has seen power moves, popping, locking, toprock, krumping and hip hop theatre surge in quality and popularity on every level, from club battles to West End stages and primetime TV. More dance features 'The Rite of Spring' turns 100 Brace yourselves for bruises, blood, sacrifice and cage fighting Who the hell is Daniel Linehan? Everything you need to know about the US choreographer Come to the cabaret! Seeing a dance show in the theatre a bit too formal for you? Cabaret's your fun new friend Ten years in British hip hop As Breakin’ Convention reaches its tenth year, we look at a great decade of hip hop Where are all the female choreographers? Holly Noble wants to know what's holding the sisterhood back when it comes to choreography Here’s how it happened... 2004: International invasion The first Breakin’ Convention, curated by Bow-born B-boy Jonzi D, put hip hop on stage at Sadler’s Wells and brought major international artists to the UK for the first time. Original California popping crew the Electric Boogaloos shared the bill with Philly hip hop theatre pioneer Rennie Harris and LA’s Tommy the Clown, inspiring UK artists to up their game. 2006: ‘Pied Pipe
Read more

The best dance shows of 2013

  • Dance
The best dance shows of 2013
The best dance shows of 2013
Time Out's dance editor selects the five shows that shone this year More dance features Behind the scenes with the Royal Ballet We went on an exclusive tour of the Royal Opera House to meet some of the country's most talented dancers Rambert's new digs Rambert dance company has a new home on the South Bank. Why not drop by? Dancing queens: Candoco at Duckie Dance company Candoco is taking up residence at gay club Duckie. We're bracing ourselves London's best ballroom dancing lessons Find the best places to sweep across the dancefloor with our guide to ballroom dancing in London Boy Blue interview East London dancers Boy Blue tell us why their new show is like ‘Breaking Bad’ More dance features Dancing queens: Candoco at Duckie Dance company Candoco is taking up residence at gay club Duckie. We're bracing ourselves A history of Don Quixote As a hot new ‘Don Quixote’ leaps on to the stage at the Royal Opera House, we look at a few of its previous remakes On stage Ballet versions of Miguel de Cervantes’s epic seventeenth-century novel ‘Don Quixote’ tend to concentrate less its on philosophical themes of idealism, imagination and insanity, and more on frilly Spanish skirts and big split leaps. Star dancer Carlos Acosta has chosen ‘Don Q’ for his first big production for the Royal Ballet, opening next week, with new designs and an update of Marius Petipa’s 1869 choreography. On screen The 2002 documentary ‘Lost in La
Read more
Advertising

A history of Don Quixote

  • Dance
  • Ballet
A history of Don Quixote
A history of Don Quixote
As a hot new ‘Don Quixote’ leaps on to the stage at the Royal Opera House, we look at a few of its previous remakes On stage Ballet versions of Miguel de Cervantes’s epic seventeenth-century novel ‘Don Quixote’ tend to concentrate less its on philosophical themes of idealism, imagination and insanity, and more on frilly Spanish skirts and big split leaps. Star dancer Carlos Acosta has chosen ‘Don Q’ for his first big production for the Royal Ballet, opening next week, with new designs and an update of Marius Petipa’s 1869 choreography. On screen The 2002 documentary ‘Lost in La Mancha’ chronicles director Terry Gilliam’s hopeless attempt to film his own Quixote story, blighted by aircraft noise, flash floods and the leading man’s slipped disc. He’s not the only one to grapple with it. Orson Welles spent 30 years working on his unfinished film, in which he planned to have Don Quixote and Sancho Panza surviving the atom bomb. On the page Author Paul Auster’s story ‘City of Glass’, from ‘The New York Trilogy’, features a writer-turned-detective with a questionable grasp on reality, Daniel Quinn, modelled on Don Q. Auster himself appears in the story, as a writer, called Paul Auster, writing about Don Quixote. Intertextuality! In the gallery A 2003 video piece by Turkish artist Sener Özmen, ‘The Road to Tate Modern’, sees Don Quixote and Sancho Panza travelling through the mountains on horse and donkey, asking directions to Tate Modern. It’s about
Read more

Six things you didn't know about 'West Side Story'

  • Dance
Six things you didn't know about 'West Side Story'
Six things you didn't know about 'West Side Story'
It boasts some of the best musical theatre choreography of all time. And it’s back in London! Here's the full ‘West Side Story’ We know that the Sharks and the Jets were originally Montagues and Capulets, we know that the girls feel pretty and that the Puerto Ricans like to be in America, and we know that West Side Story is among the few musicals during which you're definitely safe from jazz hands. But we bet you didn't know these six facts about the hit show... It was originally going to be called ‘East Side Story’ The show’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’-inspired concept, which came from choreographer-director Jerome Robbins, was going to be about rival Irish-American and Jewish gangs on New York’s Lower East Side. But following real-life turf wars involving Mexican gangs in LA, Robbins and his collaborators (playwright Arthur Laurents and composer Leonard Bernstein) switched it to the other side of town and the Polish-American Jets versus the Puerto Rican Sharks. In between it was called ‘Gangway’ – definitely not as catchy. The dancers formed real gangs (sort of) Behind the scenes, to get the dancers in character, Robbins banned the Jets and Sharks from socialising with each other. One day he posted up an article about gang violence for the cast to see, and above a photo of a murder victim wrote: ‘This is your life.’ It’s now seen as revolutionary Because of the way music and dance drive the plot and characters. At the time the show was a risky idea. It
Read more
Advertising

All hail Chisenhale!

  • Dance
The home for experimental dance celebrates its thirtieth birthday. We put on a party hat One night 30 years ago, under cover of darkness, a group of radical dance artists slipped into a Docklands warehouse and stole a maplewood floor. It wasn’t an elaborate performance piece, but a small act of retribution. The Butler’s Wharf warehouse had been the studio of the X6 Dance Collective, but they and the other artists in the building had to leave when developers took over in the early ’80s. X6 took their progressive ideas, and their maple floor, to Bow, where they founded Chisenhale Dance Space, an artist-led organisation that is still going strong 30 years on. This same, tea-stained floor has been the platform for some of the UK’s most searching and challenging dance work, from the New Dance movement of the ’70s and ’80s to today’s independent artists. As X6 member Jackie Lansley explains it, the ethos came out of the radical politics of the ’70s, and artists wanting to break beyond the mainstream to make ‘something that was different, relevant to the wider community and the political reality of our lives. Something connected with the real world.’ Chisenhale is celebrating its birthday with a season called The Big 30, bringing back the original members of X6, as well as showcasing a new generation of contemporary artists. Highlight of the season is a screening of Charles Atlas’s 1986 mock-doc, ‘Hail the New Puritan’ (Sep 21), about postpunk choreogr
Read more
Recommended
    You may also like
    You may also like
    Advertising
    Back to Top

    About us

    Contact us

    Time Out products

    Site Map
    © 2025 Time Out England Limited and affiliated companies owned by Time Out Group Plc. All rights reserved. Time Out is a registered trademark of Time Out Digital Limited.