Mid-way through Fragments – Volume 1, I began to worry about choreographer Sylvain Émard’s state of mind. The work seemed so gloomy and bleak. A post-show talk revealed that his starting point for each of this series of short pieces was to ask the dancer what was most urgent in their lives right now. He […]

A dancer on stage expects to be looked at; looked at with a critical, perhaps judgmental eye. Claire Cunningham, in this extraordinary short piece, directs our gaze and holds it. Inspired by the work of medieval Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, it conjures visions of an escape from hell, with Cunningham cowering in a corner, a […]

Brighton Festival Associate Company Vincent Dance Theatre present two re-staged shows as part of the ongoing 21 Years/21 Works project documenting and celebrating their work since the company’s inception in 1984. Look at Me Now, Mummy was originally created in 2008; and Underworld in 2012. Audiences could choose whether to see them as two separate […]

An exuberant audience of children frolic in the pre-show holding area. The performance is taking place in a very smart room (the Ambassador Suite) within the Hilton Metropole hotel, on Brighton seafront. For now, we wait to be led in to witness the legendary French company Velo Theatre present From the bottom of the well, […]

The first half of this presentation was a film screening of BAFTA-nominated ‘docu-mockumentary’ Her Master’s Voice, which charts Nina’s journey to a ventriloquist convention in America. It’s a revealing, poignant and often very funny documentary that provides insights into the artform, and a moving tribute to her mentor, the late Ken Campbell. She travels with the […]