First Look: works in progress for Dancin’ Oxford Festival, Pegasus Theatre Friday 20th January 2023

First Look provides a chance to get a preview of new dance work being created for Moving with the Times, the annual co-commission by Dancin’ Oxford and Pegasus Theatre for the Spring Dancin’ Oxford Festival. Four exciting dance artists/companies are interested in hearing your feedback on their works-in-progress. Expect to see Bharatnatyam dance, experimental music, drag, clowning, light displays, and hip hop fusion, telling powerful stories of identity. The final pieces will be presented on 3rd-4th March 2023.

This year our four featured artists/companies are Divija Melally, the fuse collective, Vita Peach and CTC Dance Company:

Divija Melally graduated from Bath Spa University, UK, with BA (Hons) Dance, and is trained in contemporary and Bharatnatyam dance. She is also a graduate of the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bangalore, India. She has performed with leading dance companies across Europe and in India. For her Moving With The Times commission, Divija will create a dance work based around her own experiences of intergenerational trauma.

The fuse collective is an interdisciplinary collective made up of early career artists including Trinity Laban graduate and disabled dance artist  Lucy Clark, visual artists Daniela Zaharieva and Yi Ting Liong, and experimental musician, Philip Kinshuck. For the Moving With The Times commission, the fuse collective plans to create an immersive, interactive piece fusing dance, art and light to communicate what it is like to live with a hidden disability.

Oxford’s own Vita Peach is a graduate from Middlesex University (BA Dance Studies, First Class). Vita is an actor, a burlesque dancer and a drag king. For her Moving With The Times commission, Vita plans to create a humorous work drawing on techniques from contemporary dance, acrobatics, theatre, burlesque, butoh, jazz and clowning to create HUGO, a piece of movement theatre about a man who goes through a very extreme transition.

Christopher Tendai founded CTC Dance Company in 2017. Christopher started his career as a dancer on the West End and performed in many West End musicals including Hamilton, West Side Story and Cabaret. CTC Dance Company creates innovative dance productions on topics including mental health awareness and gender diversity. For the Moving With The Times commission, CTC Dance Company will create a piece exploring the relationship between a cis man and a trans woman.

Date: Friday 20th January 7.00pm

Venue: Pegasus Theatre, Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RE

Booking: Tickets are “Pay what you can” (suggested donation £5): book online here

 

Jennifer Homans on 20th-century choreographer George Balanchine, in conversation with Dame Hermione Lee; Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College. A joint DANSOX and Oxford Centre for Life-Writing event, 24th November, 2022 – Maggie Watson reports

On Thursday 24th November, DANSOX and the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing presented a joint event in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Oxford. DANSOX director Professor emeritus Sue Jones introduced the Centre’s founder, Dame Hermione Lee, who interviewed writer, academic, and former dancer Jennifer Homans about her biography Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century.

Homans had spent ten years working on the book: in 2017 at the Dancing Lives conference at Wolfson College, Oxford, she spoke of her quest to explore Balanchine’s work with a view revealing the man himself through the dances that he created. Five years on, this was an opportunity to discover more about that process and about how Homans had addressed the problems that she had encountered.

 

Leanne Benjamin: built for ballet, an autobiography, Leanne Benjamin with Sarah Crompton – Maggie Watson reviews

Leanne Benjamin arrived in London in 1980, aged sixteen, to attend the Royal Ballet School, and became a principal dancer with Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet (SWRB) at twenty-three.  Her career in dance has been exceptional but there is nothing complacent about this memoir, co-authored with writer and broadcaster Sarah Crompton.  Benjamin is as disarmingly open about her failures as she is about her successes, whether they relate to her dancing, her decisions, or her behaviour.  Punctuality (or rather her lack of it) was a continual challenge:  she missed the opportunity to be promoted to soloist by arriving late on stage during a performance of Les Patineurs; on tour in India, she took a sightseeing trip and arrived at the theatre too late to step in and replace an injured principal dancer.   On the other hand Benjamin candidly does not regret a ‘silly’ decision to rehearse Romeo and Juliet with Peter Schaufuss in secret, behind the back of her director Peter Wright at SWRB, because it gave her a unique opportunity to work with Frederick Ashton. 

 

Rendez-Vous Dance present What Songs May Do… Burton Taylor Studio, 4th-5th October 2022

Oxford Playhouse’ Burton Taylor Studio this week offers an intimate evening of dance with What Songs May Do… Revealed by Nina Simone’s songs, this highly anticipated duet by award-winning choreographer and Rendez-Vous Dance artistic director Mathieu Geffré exposes with an unapologetic passion the fractured relationship of a once romantic couple as they delve into their past in an attempt to rebuild their future together. What Songs May Do… is an inclusive dance piece that celebrates love in all its diversity.

What the critics say about Geffré and Rendez-Vous Dance:

“An artist with pedigree, bringing depth, experience and impactful movement quality.” Graham Watts, Dance Writer

“If you’re searching for that perfect balance between strength and grace, I strongly recommend Rendez-Vous Dance.” Chloe Fordham, Dance Writer

Dates: Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 5th October, 7.30pm

Venue: Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford Playhouse, Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2LW

Tickets: £12.50, book online here

Duration: 60 minutes, no interval

Age: recommended 13+

Find out more about Rendez-Vous Dance here

 

DANSOX Film Night: New Wave Ballet with talks by Lynne Wake and Dame Monica Mason 19th February 2018 – Maggie Watson reports

There was much to celebrate tonight at St Hilda’s, when five years of fascinating DANSOX events programmed by Professor Susan Jones coincided with the 125^th anniversary of the college that so generously hosts these events. It was a wonderfully inclusive evening that centred round a screening of Lynne Wake’s New Wave Ballet, a documentary film about the early ballets of Kenneth MacMillan, before a packed audience that included members of the college and wider University, participants in the local dance community, practitioners and dance scholars from further afield, Dame Monica Mason, and Deborah, Lady MacMillan.

Wake’s introductory talk vividly described how eager she had been to see Edmée Wood’s films of Royal Ballet productions, her initial disappointment at the poor quality examples that she found, her excitement at discovering the original recordings, and the work involved in their restoration for the Royal Opera House. Her documentary is an outstanding example of the use of archival footage to bring back to life the essence of dances that might otherwise be lost, by showing film alongside interviews with the actual dancers, who know the works from the inside.

Next, Dame Monica spoke about her experiences working with MacMillan, as a dancer and as his répétiteur, noting the wide range of his artistic interests, his willingness to take risks and work with new collaborators, and his ability to reprove but then move on. Almost five years to the day since she spoke at the first DANSOX event celebrating the centenary of The Rite of Spring, she described what it was like to be the Chosen Maiden, dancing between the criss-crossing legs of the corps de ballet as they lay face down on the stage, or being passed from hand-to hand high overhead (an image reminiscent to me of Greek vase paintings of the sacrifice of Iphigenia). I remember seeing her in the role in 1982, and still carry pictures of her performance in my head.

At the reception following the brief question and answer session, St Hilda’s Vice Principal Dr Georgina Paul thanked DANSOX patron Sheila Forbes (the former Principal of St Hilda’s) and proposed a toast to DANSOX’ other patron, Dame Monica, to mark the fact that she is now an Honorary Fellow of the College.

Maggie Watson

19 February 2018

 

Ana Barbour: a tribute

Late on Monday 6th November 2017 Ana Barbour, much loved, inspirational and guiding presence in the Oxford dance scene, passed away having battled with cancer.  Her touching funeral at the home she loved on Sunday 12th November was attended by numerous family, friends, and colleagues, and was a celebration of her life and achievements in speeches, songs and dance.  I felt honoured to speak on that occasion about Ana’s work as a dance artist in Oxford, and I am posting here my speech to pay tribute to her.  You can also find links below to her own blog Anadances, Cafe Reason of whom she was an integral part, and the DEC Project; and her own occasional writings for this blog.  Oxford Dance Writers would really welcome other voices in this endeavour of remembrance, so please use the comments facility below to add to this partial picture your particular memories of Ana.  Thank you!

Ana Barbour

When I mounted the Solos Project for Oxford dance artists in 2008 Ana was one of six dancers who showed solos in the Burton Taylor’s intimate studio space. Her Butoh inspired piece Baggage accompanied by the atmospheric music of her long term friend and collaborator Malcolm Atkins was a remarkable episode in which having entered bowed down by a bundle on her back she burrowed into the baggage itself, morphing into surreal shapes and images of confined struggle that were humorous, poignant and dreamlike. It was my first experience of Ana as creative imagination and compelling performer.

 

4×4 Ephemeral Architectures: Gandini Juggling at Oxford Playhouse 2nd September 2015

4 jugglers and 4 ballet dancers share a stage for the first time…

Direct from Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 4×4 is a breathtaking collaboration between the two seemingly different worlds of ballet and juggling. Both artforms make fleeting journeys through time and space, tracing invisible lines, like an imaginary architect.

The sensational Gandini Juggling have wowed audiences across the world with their clever, thrilling productions. Returning to their love affair with patterns and mathematics 4×4 is a unique dialogue between jugglers and dancers. Directed by world renowned juggler Sean Gandini and choreographed by Royal Ballet dancer Ludovic Ondiviela, this groundbreaking cross-art form experience is not to be missed.

“A splendid blend of talents”  The Times ****

“A clever, cool and wondrous show”  The Stage ****

Performance:  Wednesday 2nd September, 7.30pm

Venue:  Oxford Playhouse, Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2LW

Tickets: £11.50-£20

Book online here or call the Box Office on 01865 305305