Luke Rittner, Chief Executive, welcomed Darcey’s appointment:
“Our membership voted overwhelmingly to appoint Darcey as our fourth President and I am personally delighted that she has accepted the position. Darcey is one of Britain’s most distinguished ballerinas, and her passion for all forms of dance make her the ideal role model to lead the Royal Academy of Dance towards its centenary in 2020,” he said. “We look forward to working with her on a wide variety of national and international projects that will keep us, and our members, at the forefront of dance education and training.”

Darcey commented: _“It is a privilege to be asked to be President of the Royal Academy of Dance, an institution which consistently makes such an outstanding contribution to the art of classical ballet and to so many forms of dance. It is very important to me that the RAD continues to both provide the very best quality of training, but also continues to instill the enjoyment and love of dance in everyone by offering such a wide range of opportunities to get involved,” she said.
“As President of the RAD, I will aim to embody the Academy’s vision and values, which Dame Antoinette Sibley so wholeheartedly supported and which strongly reflect not only the organisation’s rich past but also its investment in the future of dance, dance-education and training. I am passionate about dance and truly look forward to representing the RAD in this role.”_

Although she moved to Australia after retiring from the Royal Ballet in 2007, she still maintains an active interest in dance in the UK – and will be spending even more time back here from the Autumn when she joins the panel of judges on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing.

www.rad.org.uk

Image: Darcey Bussell, courtesy of Darcey Bussell

Commissioned artists:
Tony Adigun – the Artistic Director of Avant Garde Dance and a Work Place artist. As a dancer Tony has worked with artists such as Whitney Houston, Usher, Ashanti, as well as many leading UK artists. He was recently awarded the Marion North Mentoring Award to be mentored by Akram Khan.

Ben Ash – co-director of Dog Kennel Hill Project with Rachel Lopez de La Nieta and Henrietta Hale. He has been working in the field of dance, movement and performance since 1995, working across a broad spectrum of aesthetics and working practices. Ben Ash was commissioned for The Place Prize in 2006, for a piece co-choreographed with Rachel Lopez de La Nieta.

Riccardo Buscarini – a Place Prize Finalist in 2011, together with Antonio de la Fe Guedes, Italian choreographer Riccardo Buscarini is currently collaborating with knitwear designer Brooke Roberts, with whom he was Creative in Residence at The Hospital Club, London.
Seke Chimutengwende – works in improvisation and choreography, in large and small scale works and in cross-art performances as a dancer, maker and teacher.

Darren Ellis – director of Darren Ellis Dance, established in 2007, through which he has developed a series of works that have toured nationally, currently an Associate Artist at Danceeast.

Jonathan Goddard and Gemma Nixon both dance with Rambert and formed Goddard Nixon in 2009. The company has performed nationally and internationally, including gigs at Royal Opera House, Royal Court, The Victoria & Albert Museum, and The Place.

Hanna Gillgren and Heidi Rustgaard, the Artistic Directors of h2dance, have been working together since 2000, producing provocative performances addressing political and gender issues with humour and emotion.

Mamoru Iriguchi is a zoologist, a theatre designer and a multimedia performance maker. His work is informed by his knowledge in designing spaces for performance and an interest in 2D and 3D. Iriguchi’s work explores issues of gender, sexuality, symbiosis and parasitism, fairytales and evolution theories.

Nina Kov – was Associate Artist at Dance Digital in 2010-11, with the artists’ collective Hellicar & Lewis. Her primary interest is to explore the possibilities of expression of the unconscious in dance within live digital performances. She performed her latest work Divide by Zero at The Place during Resolution! 2012.

Joe Moran – choreographer, dancer and Artistic Director of Dance Art Foundation. Joe creates dance performances, film and installations for public spaces, and his work is informed by the analysis of choreography as a practice reflecting on embodiment, perception of time, and structural intervention.

Rick Nodine – after completing a degree in Biology, Rick studied Contact Improvisation and began a performing career. In 2001, he became a member of staff at London Contemporary Dance School where he teaches Composition and Improvisation. For the past 12 years he has collaborated with many dancers, actors and musicians to create improvised performance.

Neil Paris – the Artistic Director of SMITH dancetheatre, works as a maker, performer and teacher, and was a former member of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, with whom he toured internationally, earning three Olivier Awards nominations.

Eva Recacha – a Place Prize Finalist in 2011 and currently a Work Place artist. Her choreographic practice is focused on exploring ways of relating movement and text, creating works that are poetic and humorous, juxtaposing both media to create a sense of misplacement.
Moreno Solinas – a performer with Bonachela Dance Company, DV8 Physical Theatre, Stan Won’t Dance, and Earthfall before starting to make his own work with BLOOM! Collective, founded in 2007. He is currently a Work Place artist.

Robbie Synge was previously a physiologist before pursuing a career in dance, film and animation. He has worked as a dance artist across the UK, and he is working as associate artist with Frank McConnell and plan B dance company in Ross-shire.

Ben Wright is an independent choreographer and director working in contemporary dance, opera and theatre at national and international level. He is the Artistic Director of bgroup company, which he founded in 2008. He was commissioned for The Place Prize in 2006 and 2008.

The Place Prize was launched in 2004 and runs biennially, with the continued support of Bloomberg, When this summer’s works have been created The Place Prize for dance will have seen the creation of 92 pieces of new choreography, with an investment of over £1.2million. Previous winners include Rafael Bonachela (2004), Nina Rajarani (2006), Adam Linder (2008) and Ben Duke and Raquel Meseguer (2011).

Preview performances: Thu 6 to Thu 13 September 2012
Semi-final performances: Sat 15 to Sat 22 September 2012
Finals: Spring 2013
Tickets will be on sale from June
www.theplaceprize.com

The tap-dancing is pretty dazzling, choreographed by Bill Deamer. It’s legerdepied really: from the waist up, an air of nonchalant idling, while the feet are a blur of patent leather, rapping out punctilious beats.

Bill Deamer provides exuberant and witty choreography and Matthew White’s production is delivered with zest and polish.

In another extraordinary set-piece, we meet the seven cave-dwellers who will keep Snow White safe from the Queen’s wrath. Suspended from cables, and equipped with potholers’ headlamps, they scuttle up and down the vertical rock-face with the speed and adroitness of cockroaches.

Preljocaj tells his story in unrelenting fashion, movement burdened with hermetic gesture, and resembling nothing so much as a cross between weight-training and the more dispiriting aspects of early American modern dance of the Denishawn era.

Half-a-dozen magical, standout encounters leapt from this performance, each of which highlights how unlucky we are not to see Angelin Preljocaj’s work – or the company that bears his name – more frequently in the UK. But in spite of these memorable moments I left with an overall feeling of a promise that fell tantalisingly short of being wholly fulfilled.

Preljocaj’s vision of the Grimm Brothers’ tale leaves no stone unturned and – unlike Walt Disney – he hasn’t flinched from showing the story’s lesser-known brutality. Thus we have the heart roughly torn from a hart (when the huntsmen are unwilling to kill Snow White) and the Queen being danced to death wearing red-hot, iron shoes in the ballet’s hideous climax. These authenticities are joined by some additional artistic licence of a purely sexual nature. The tale’s darkness is emphasised by the copious black cloth in Jean Paul Gaultier’s costumes – with styles ranging from brilliant to frightfully clichéd – and in a very literal application of the lighting. To be blunt, there were large tracts of the ballet that were danced in the dusk. I understand the reasons. It is dark in the forest, but if you can’t see that the dancer is meant to be a deer or the heart being cut from her body, then what’s the point? It might just as well left to our imagination.

While bemoaning the periods of gloomy lighting and some of the more outrageous cartoon costumes, I commend Thierry Leproust’s simple and effective set designs, which create a striking and stylish imagery. The musical compilation juxtaposes Mahler’s Greatest Hits through excerpts of eight symphonies, with additional modern music by an unexplained entity known as 79D. It works surprisingly well, though the recorded music is a very poor substitute for live musicians.

Some of the performances were disappointing, especially given that this was a long-awaited UK premiere. Patrizia Telleschi’s Queen was so ill-at-ease with the catwalk model caricature created for her by the very worst of Gaultier’s costumes that it was hard to see the evil; and, despite being one of the original quartet of dancers to learn the title role in 2008, Virginie Caussin was entirely unconvincing as Snow White. She was not helped at all by a flowing white robe that wrapped under her crotch, like a loin cloth or nappy, such that a buttock was often exposed. One might concede the rationale of a costume that is both virginal and revealing but it was distinctly unflattering for the dancer. However, I qualify this by acknowledging that Caussin’s dancing was often excellent, particularly when enveloped by the strong partnering of Sergio Diaz as her Prince. The slinky feline antics of Natacha Grimaud and Émilie Lalande as the Queen’s two cat attendants were also notable.

Preljocaj’s has created some superb dances, not least in the remarkable physics of the “dead” duet, where the Prince dances with the inert body of Snow White (after she has been poisoned by the Queen’s apple); and in the preceding duet where the bodies of the Queen and Snow White seem to be conjoined by the apple. The greatest spark of genius comes in the decision to portray the seven protectors of Snow White as ordinary mine workers (as indeed they were in early versions of the fairy tale) and not the dwarves that they were to become; and then to depict their labour through comedic abseiling (brilliantly organised by Alexandre del Perugia). This aerial work was augmented by a very evocative cameo for the ghost of Snow White’s Mother (Nuriya Nagimova) and her comatose daughter, which provided the most spectacular visual image of the ballet.

Preljocaj deserves credit for finally breaking the spell and turning Snow White into an evocative and (largely) stylish ballet, while working within the self-imposed constraint of remaining faithful to the fairy tale’s narrative structure. I have watched the 2009 DVD of a performance in France many times (only Diaz and Lalande crossed over from that cast to this) and grown to love it. Of course, to film a DVD there must be light. This is perhaps the first time ever that I have felt a live performance to be a paler imitation of the film.

Continues at Sadler’s Wells until Sat 12 May (returns only)
www.sadlerswells.com

Graham Watts writes for many publications including DanceTabs, Dancing Times & Dance Europe. He is Chair of the Critics’ Circle Dance Section.

Photos: Bettina Strenske

Originally created in 2010 for the inaugural UK Young Artists showcase in Derby, Matters of Life and Death is choreographer Katie Green’s eighth, and most substantial, work to date. Appearing here in its London premiere, the hour-long piece takes Graham Swift’s unsettling novel Waterland as its inspiration, in particular a scene in which four characters find a drowned body in a sluice and how this fatal discovery reverberates through their own lives.

Opening with a sequence performed in near-darkness, in which flashes of physical forms and suggestions of action are picked out by torchlight,_ Matters of Life and Death_ plays with the visual and the cinematic throughout its duration. The body discovered, a panicked Daniela Larsen is first on the scene, fretting and casting about herself for assistance. She is joined by three helpers, who hoist |*Adam Kirkham’s* body from the water; just as it seems we have the measure of the skittish Larsen, and a more dispassionate Rebecca Yates, the scene rewinds and we view again from another character’s perspective. With clever wrapping and reversing, Green’s choreography makes visible the conflicting narratives of multiple narrators.

One might imagine a corpse would have little to do, but Kirkham’s body becomes animated in a series of flashback and dream sequences that illustrate his impact on the other characters. Marie Chabert seems to feel weighed down with guilt after the discovery, the world pressing in on her and Kirkham’s carcass heavy on her lap. Larsen fears the body reanimating and making erotic advances on her, ending in her own strangulation; Morgan Cloud imagines instead some kind of brotherly communion. The grim situation pushes all four into a frenzied whirl, bodies pushed off-kilter as lives are unbalanced by the discovery.

Max Perryment’s electronic soundscore is a superbly atmospheric accompaniment to the work; much like Green’s choreography, it’s evocative without being obvious. Green’s five agile dancers make nimble work of the emotional twists and turns, and keep the piece both enjoyably physical and admirably legible. The disquieting subject matter and troubled characters leave little room here for levity; dark as it is, Matters of Life and Death is an accomplished and highly watchable piece of dance theatre.

Q&A with Katie Green

www.madebykatiegreen.co.uk

Lise Smith is a dance manager and teacher, as well as a regular contributor to londondance.com & Arts Professional

Solidly standing under a bright spotlight, feet firmly anchored into the ground, Katja Nyqvist is already on stage as the audience starts to fill up their seats, her strong posture speaking for her piece more than words ever could. The Finnish-born dancer/choreographer likes to describe her work Underfoot with the words of Andre Lepecki (Associate Professor, Department of Performance Studies at New York University) :‘‘The moment one gives up one’s verticality, the first thing one discovers is that even the smoothest ground is not flat. The ground is grooved, cracked, cool, painful, hot, smelly, dirty.’‘

Nyqvist’s dance takes us back to the basics: a grounded body, a shift of weight from one leg to another, hips slowly undulating and then comes the movement. It is natural, free and a breath of fresh air in comparison with more overly thought-out choreography. She explores the floor, breathing heavily into each movement. Her graceful and hypnotising hands complete the intention of each step. There is no music but the rhythm is seen and heard through her feet. It’s sometimes fast and tribal, when she travels across the floor with bent knees and a raw energy; sometimes delicate when she reaches to the sky, using the ground to lift herself up. Underfoot is about movement, movement so physically and spiritually free, that it suddenly comes alive.

The second piece in this double bill is a dance theatre creation by Annarita Mazzilli, of Mazzilli Dance Theatre. For How Much? was originally created for the International Organisation for Migration’s Buy Responsibly campaign, to highlight the issue of forced labour around the world.

The intriguing choreography demonstrates the brutality of a world where bodies are robbed of their souls, forced to work against their will. The piece demonstrates order and chaos, hope and despair: the dancers, distressed workers, travel through the stage robotically, the living-dead, deprived of their spirit. Dancer Donovan Morris, entering the stage with his tongue sticking out and a vicious smile on his face, rendered perfectly the sneaky and coldly abusive employer, unashamed of the fear he imposes. The dancers are scared, hurt, hands up to the sky, trying to reach an uncertain, better future. They translate the choreographer’s emotions perfectly, switching from sorrow to anger, pushing desperately against the walls of the stage to try to escape their reality, and letting loose on the floor in wild movement, refusing to silently accept their misery. They dance together and with each other, while the boss, smirking, rubbing his hands, uses them to his advantage.

Annarita Mazzilli is excellent; her energy fills up the room, her facial expressions vivid. Each of the dancers are also able to show their strength and personality in this work, proving their impressive technique as well as their performing skills. The music, composed and played live by by Andy Higgs, adds emotion and depth to Mazzilli’s work. The use of coins for props is interesting: the dancers, throwing themselves desperately on the ground, ready for anything to catch a few coins dropped to the floor, painting a convincing picture of the horror of forced labour, and the mixed feelings of anger and hopelessness.

A powerful and deeply human choreography, performed with energy and emotion, For How Much? is thought-provoking and moving.

Continues to Sat 12 May & Thu 17 – Sat 19 May, 8pm.
Blue Elephant Theatre, 59a Bethwin Rd, Camberwell SE5 0XT
Tickets £9 ( conc. £6, Southwark residents £4)
www.blueelephanttheatre.co.uk

Emmanuelle Julien took part in English National Ballet’s Dance is the Word course earlier this year.

It was kind of like being on the set of an educational children’s TV show. The three kids entered the playing space and the tall one in the middle told us the title of the piece. Dancer Thibault Lac helpfully explained that a zombie is something both living and dead and an aporia is a logical contradiction. This was the start of eight illustrated lessons in which the audience were taught, Words and Pictures style, all about the ambiguous relationships between music and dance, the body and voice, the internal and external experience of performing. Lac and Salka Ardal Rosengren joined by conceiver/choreographer Daniel Linehan put on a didactic display of interactive games featuring lots of repetitive singing and jerky, angular movements.

Linehan and pals wore faux-neutral deadpan facial expressions for most of the piece, but with a twinkle of ironic sneer detectable just beneath the surface. This flatness of effect allowed us to feel good about finding their philosophical antics silly and to understand the intentional irony in insistently sung phrases like ‘the body can be what it wants’, ‘the music is the background of the dance’ and other maxims of the post-modern dancer’s dilemma. This is not particularly meant as criticism, however, as self-reflexive musing is a legitimate and often productive way of working in the medium of contemporary dance these days. And Linehan and his company invested a good deal of playful energy and even a pinch of emotional commitment into their explorations.

A highlight was a solo by Linehan in which he paced the floor, shifting directions suddenly, looking up and down, flopping to the ground, all in perfect sync with the movements of a video image seemingly shot from his own perspective, making us wonder if he had a tiny camera hidden somewhere on his head. Yet when he faced us the projected image eerily reflected a bank of empty seats. ‘This is only live, this is really live, this cannot be live, it happens to be live’ Linehan chanted in a desperate monotone, invoking both the disorienting paradox of this image and the agonising necessity and dependence inherent in the relationship between performer and audience.

The three seemed a bit fretful as they sang out ‘The only things I have been given are this Body, Voice, Desire, Interiority’ and other moments verged on real pathos. A section in which Rosengren tried to speak as Luc manually vibrated her larynx and pushed on her diaphragm, and a sequence in which Luc tried to exactly repeat phrases swiftly whispered into his ear by Linehan, who was also tenderly, encouragingly holding his hand. Rosengren has a fabulously shouty, rock chick voice – it would be great to see her front a band – and all three looked sweet when they played dress-up near the end, appearing in costumes with shiny tassels and feathers to administer a session of headbanging.

Photo: Daniel Linhan & Salka Ardal Rosengren in ‘Zombie Aporia’ by Jun Luc Tanghe
http://dlinehan.wordpress.com

Jeffrey Gordon Baker took part in this year’s Resolution! Review – The Place’s online magazine which includes reviews of every Resolution! show, by professional dance critics and aspiring writers.

When Preljocaj lets his imagination run away with him like this, the results are spectacular.

Preljocaj’s choreographic imagination steals over you. His movements give a freshly vivid inflection to his characters