What first sparked your interest in dance?
I was always keen on gymnastics and drama as a child and I decided to take a B-TEC course at Coventry Centre for the Perfoming Arts. At first, I was more interested in theatre but it was whilst on the course that I was introduced to contemporary dance. I grabbed it and ran with it! The first dance dance performance I vividly remember (whilst at CCPA) was London Contemporary Dance Theatre at Warwick Arts Centre. White Heat by Dan Wagoner was in the programme. I was stunned. The choreography, the dancers ( Paul Liburd, Aletta Collins, Kate Coyne, Isabel Tamen, Isabel Mortimer, David Hughes ), the music ( Bartok’s 4th String Quartet ) just blew me away completely. I still think of this piece when I choreograph!

You gave up dancing [on stage anyway] in 2007. Do you miss it?
I really do not miss it now but I thought I would at the time. I have had a couple of outings since 2007 ( Richard Alston’s 60th birthday at Sadler’s Wells in 2008 and The Place’s 40th birthday in 2010) both times performing different solos that Richard made for me. I enjoy teaching and choreographing so I get to do the dancing I like, which is not on stage. Towards the end of my dancing career I enjoyed the studio experience more than the stage experience.

You’ve made several works for Richard Alston Dance Company – which usually dances work made by Richard Alston. Are you aware of working in the company style – or do you consciously push to do things differently?
I danced for Richard’s company for twelve and half years so I obviously have an innate style which is compatible with the company. I think that’s related to the musicality that his work requires from a dancer. I, like Richard, take inspiration from music. Over the years that I have been making work for the company, I have developed a way of working that uses the dancers in a different way to Richard. Lie of the Land has been a turning point in this process because I worked with many different pieces of music to create the individual duets and solos before arranging and sculpting them to Ned Rorem’s 4th String Quartet . Richard has been a great mentor to me and provides a fantastic support and sounding board for me to bounce my ideas off.

Pendulum , the duet you made for Ballet Black in 2009 was very well reviewed. How did that collaboration come about?
I was approached by Cassa Pancho [Ballet Black founder & Artistic Director] after she saw a piece that I had made for RADC.
Did it feel like a big leap then – to make work for a ballet company?
I remember being very nervous at the first rehearsal! But then I was amazed at how responsive they were to me. I work in a technical way so I way able to draw on their own technique yet ‘Martin-ize’ it! The piece grew individually with each couple. I had three casts and I was happy for them to interpret it in different ways. The idea was the same but each couple had their own way of phrasing. There were no counts (with the Steve Reich score) so they had the freedom to play with timing. They knew the music would stop at 8mins 30secs so the challenge was to finish before it!

Tell us a bit about Captured the new work for Ballet Black…
I have made a quartet which is about 20 minutes in length set to Shostakovich’s 11th String Quartet in F minor . The Quartets are all quite short, almost fragmented. Each one, for me, has its own emotion, structure and story, apart from the last one, which is a combination of the previous movements. There are real moments of restriction and tension within the dance and music which tug the four dancers through the space.
I hear the dancers are en pointe…
Yes this is the first pointe piece I have made. It took a bit of time on the first couple of days finding out how quickly a dancer can go on and off pointe. The speed in which you can turn and promenade is much faster than in flat shoes so I was very excited about this as quite a few of the movements in the string quartet are very fast.

Did you have a ballet training along the way?
I trained for 3 years at London Contemporary Dance School and had ballet every day, so am comfortable with the language and pas de deux.

Have you started working with Scottish Ballet yet on your piece for Dance GB?
No, I start on March 5th for a week of R&D and then go back for 4 weeks sometime in May and June.

How will the collaboration with Turner Prize winner Martin Boyce work?
We had a great meeting yesterday looking at the design and how we can make this work in a theatre and also in a tent which is where we will be performing in London.

It’s part of the Cultural Olympiad – how are you feeling about it?
It will be the largest production I have worked on and I’m really excited and looking forward to getting into the studio and working with the dancers. I will have a live orchestra in Glasgow and Cardiff so that will be awesome!!

What/how have been the greatest influences on your development in dance?
Richard Alston !!!

Desert Island style – your Favourite film?
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.
Music? Elgar’s Cello Concerto
Book? – can I choose two? Maybe the Moon by Armistead Maupin and Perfume by Patrick Süskind

If you didn’t work in dance, what might you have done instead?
I was really into mathematics at school so maybe something in that field…

Richard Alston Dance Company, Sadler’s Wells, 29 Feb & 1 Mar
Ballet Black, Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House, 29 Feb – 7 Mar
Dance GB

www.ballet.org.uk

Press links
Nick Clark, Independent, 21 Feb.12
Matthew Holehouse, Telegraph, 12 Feb.12

At 1pm on 18 May 2012 thousands of school children from the UK and beyond will take part in a record breaker, performing five minute routine with original music score – Céleste, by Scanner and Joel Cadbury, created especially for Big Dance.

The aim is to beat the current record holders for the largest simultaneous multi venue dance, The Netherlands with 1,472 locations and 264,188 people dancing. This record attempt is just a warm up to the Big Dance Week which runs 7-14 July during which all Schools Pledge participants agree to undertake an additional 20minutes of dance activity each day!

Wayne McGregor said:
“The Schools Pledge is a fantastic and fun opportunity for young people of all ages to learn a new dance inspired by the Olympics and to perform it as part of our world record attempt. On the day the Olympic Torch arrives in the UK, young dancers throughout Britain and in our partner countries worldwide will share a unique moment in time, dancing together and in unison, sharing our passion for the art form we love. Everyone, take up the challenge, learn the dance, teach it to your friends, your class and your school and on Friday May 18th be a world record breaker!”

Teachers can now see McGregor’s choreography and register their school.

Find out more:
Big Dance 2012
Wayne McGregor | Random Dance

Li’s show Elecktro Kif is currently touring the UK and comes to the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre next week (Fri 2 & Sat 3 March)

Donald Hutera’s interview with Blanca Li
Guardian review of Stella McCartney’s London Fashion Week show

The show’s traditional flamenco sequences are its strongest….The show’s more experimental numbers are often awkward.

Trained as a dancer, she’ll shimmy through her songs, stepping back for some traditional flamenco footwork or an easy swagger, playing castanets or snapping a fan open.

Olga Pericet Company, made up of some of Spain’s best musicians, dancers and singers, managed to entertain, captivate and win the audience of dance lovers, in an almost sold out performance, and warmed up the room from the outside freezing temperatures quicker that you can say ‘Olé’.

Pericet herself opened the show elegantly in a white, aerial dress, in a scene resembling a ballerina spinning in a precious music box. Performing a mix of traditional spanish dance and ballet, she was met on stage by a technical and flexible male dancer, whose silent and soft glides and jumps across the floor slowly led us to a sharp and unexpected turnaround in the following piece.

Highly contrasting with the previous scene, wrapped in a bright yellow veil worn on a long pink dress and surrounded by musicians, the flamenco street party started. Looking like a night scene out of her native Cordoba, Olga Pericet started swaying and stomping, throwing her veil around her as she danced in wild movement, the veil no longer an accessory but becoming part of her body.

The performance went on, with each new piece a testimony of the versatility of the dancers, from technical, improvised-looking, fast pieces, to slower paced story telling scenes. Dancing successively with her two male partners, they created a series of romantic hide and seek, writing with their bodies the emotional lyrics of the flamenco singer.

A circle of clapping and stomping musicians later added to the show, with proud singing and exclamations, exposing the true essence of flamenco : not only a dancer in a dramatic expression of her feelings, but a whole musical scene where voice, instruments and body become intertwined in an explosion of passion.

Review by londondance.com subscriber: Emmanuelle Julien

In theory, there are enough ideas in Guest Suites to furnish many rooms. The problem in performance, however, is that too few are fully delivered.

The venerable Palace Theatre, with its cheeky little turquoise/green cherubs permanently gazing at the stage, is not much known as a dance venue and yet it was the stage that introduced Anna Pavlova to a paying London audience (– she performed here in 1910 and 1911) and Nijinsky also landed on these boards from his great leaps, in 1914. But I doubt if it’s ever rained inside the theatre before – and boy, does it rain!

Both Acts are closed by the iconic title song, performed solo before the interval by Adam Cooper as Don Lockwood (the character forever associated with Gene Kelly thanks to the eponymous 1952 film) and reprised by the whole cast as a very wet finale. More than 10,000 litres of water are pumped out for each performance and quite a few gallons of it are splashed over the front rows of the orchestra stalls. I suspect that it is the only theatre in London currently selling umbrellas alongside the programmes and CDs. For those who wonder about such things, the water falls into a recessed central part of the stage, creating a pool for splashing in; and its worth staying in the theatre during the interval just to watch the teamwork of the stagehands with mops clearing it away in time for the next act to begin.

I confess to being both a Gene Kelly addict and a fan of the film and so I approached this stage version (arriving in the West End via the Chichester Festival Theatre) with some trepidation. How do you top the film that is widely regarded (although not when it was made) as the greatest Hollywood Musical? The answer, of course, is that they can’t BUT instead the whole production and performance team has given London a scintillating, hilarious and massively enjoyable show.

Andrew Wright’s choreography leaves us with enough iconic moments from the original to make it comfortable but adds in plenty of his own touches. His remake of the Broadway Melody ballet sequence is respectful, yet refreshing. Several of the dance team are not long out of training and there is a prevailing, infectious air of enthusiasm and freshness throughout the ensemble numbers. Cooper, of course, is a dancer through and through and while I doubt there is much desire left in him to turn double assembles through the air, he still spins elegantly and his tapping is excellent. We know he can dance but, more to the point, he can sing and act well enough to merit the “song-and-dance-man” tag. At times, his low range sounded uncannily like Kelly.

The whole cast is excellent but I pay special tribute to Scarlett Strallen’s velvet voice (in the Debbie Reynolds role of Kathy Selden) and Katherine Kingsley’s excellent, comic portrayal of Lina Lamont, the squeaky-voiced silent film diva whom Selden selflessly dubs through the transition into “talkies”. Kingsley was so often the scene-stealer but the lead trio of Cooper, Strallen and Daniel Crossley (as Cosmo Brown) were tightly co-ordinated throughout the other main number ( ‘Good Morning’ ). Cooper and Crossley also combined excellently in a solid song-and-tap routine with David Lucas in ‘Moses Supposes’ and Crossley managed the near impossible task of singing ‘Make ‘em Laugh’ through a range of physical tricks. After filming this number in Hollywood, the original Cosmo, Donald O’Connor was hospitalised!

The film extracts of Monumental Pictures last silent film ( ‘The Royal Rascal’ ) and first talkie ( ‘The Dancing Cavalier’ ) are crucial plot devices and were done to perfection. Which brings me back to the rain. Originally, the song was to have been performed by all three film stars (Kelly, Reynolds and O’Connor) and the publicity photos of the trio in their yellow galoshes survived the decision for the song to be performed solo by Kelly (famously over a 2-day shoot in which he was ill with a temperature up to 103°). Here, the production pays homage to both ideas with Cooper delivering the solo, which while not an identical twin to the film is certainly a kissing cousin, and then Cooper, Strallen and Crossley leading out the finale as the yellow mac brigade. The people in the first few rows certainly get wet but listening to them on the way out, all was laughter without an inkling of complaint – even on a drearily cold February evening!

I rarely think of going back to see a performance as soon as it ends, but this was certainly such an occasion. It’s a glorious feeling, being happy again. Those lucky cherubs get to see it every night!

Review: Graham Watts

www.singinintherain.co.uk

The evening brought us flamenco at its theatrical best, unadulterated by concerns other than itself. It also brought that most uncompromising of flamenco divas, Cortés.

The complex interplay between the shimmering guitars, clapping hands and weighty grace of Cortés’s arms and torso was spellbinding.