Moving With The Times – First Look, Pegasus Theatre 17th January 2020

First Look is a preview of new dance works commissioned by Dancin’ Oxford and Pegasus for Moving With The Times, the dance showcase an established part of the annual Dancin’ Oxford Festival.  An exciting chance to see this year’s companies present three incredible works in progress, followed by Q&A with the artists.

Burning House is a high physical contemporary dance piece that explores human mortality from Amy Foskett Dance. “Our bodies and our planet. Ignorance is bliss and we are blissfully ignoring it. Disregarding death and highlighting dangerous immortality…”

In a time of tick boxes, labels and separation Thomas Page Dances Commonality looks at the parts of life that everyone has in common. Through the exploration of shared experiences and feelings this performances paints the possibilities of coming together as one community. Featuring contemporary dance, a unique score, live photography and lots of tape!

Drishti Dance, is a well established performing arts organization producing high quality classical Indian dance works. Choreographed by Anuradha Chaturvedi, the Artistic Director, the work will be a contemporary expression of Kathak dance tradition, in all its exquisite grace and composure, creating a dynamic fusion of movement and rhythm set to the music of Shammi Pithia.

Performance:  Friday 17th January, 7.30pm

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

Tickets:  Moving With The Times – First Look is a Pay What You Can night.  Book your place(s) online or through the box office in advance and pay on the night – if you enjoy the evening and can pay more than a standard ticket price – please do, if you can’t – pay what you can.  Pegasus can’t take payments online in advance so if you wish to pay any amount by card in advance please call the box office 01865 812 150 and they will process your payment. Otherwise cash or card payments can be made on the night.

The final triple bill Moving With The Times will be at Pegasus 28th & 29th February 2020

There are no age restrictions for this piece and younger audiences are very welcome, but it is likely to be enjoyed most by those aged 11+

 

Drishti Dance in Facet, The Old Fire Station, Oxford Friday 29 July -Maggie Watson reviews

A performance that is entirely, purely, dance is a rare treat in Oxford, but it is what Anuradha Chaturvedi’s company Drishti Dance gave us at the Old Fire Station on Friday in Facet, as part of the Offbeat Festival.  Chaturvedi brought together professional and student dancers in a vivid and innovative double bill of two interlinked works that were quite simply about dance.

Kathak is an ancient, sophisticated and complex Indian classical dance form, redolent of a history that goes back beyond the Moghul kings of North India, with a vocabulary of detailed gestures, stamping and rhythmic spins that thrilled and enthralled the audience on Friday night; and what an audience it was!  The excitement in the auditorium beforehand was palpable, as we heard the sound of the dancers’ ankle bells as they gathered in the wings.  A little boy behind me exclaimed ‘they are like gods!’ – and so they were, in their gorgeous green, blue, orange, black and gold silks, bathed in a mist of coloured light.

 

Women GOLive, Old Fire Station Oxford, 14th & 15th July performances – Maggie Watson reviews

Women GOLive has continued to surprise, excite and entertain Oxford audiences with eclectic but well chosen performances of highly original work. The second and third nights of this four-night run included traditional and experimental South Asian dance from Arunima Kumar and Anuradha Chaturvedi, new contemporary dance works from visiting artist Salah El Brogy and Welsh company Ffin Dance (who bravely gave new takes on iconic music), a fresh work from Hanna Wroblewski, Mara Vivas’ and My Johansson’s interactive performance installation, and humour from Sarah Kent and Aliki Mbakoyianni. A terrific line-up.

 

Women GOlive showcase curated by Donald Hutera, Old Fire Station 13th-16th July 2016

Women GOlive is a showcase of dance by female performers – and men are welcome too!  Kicking off next Wednesday, 13 July, the mini-festival hosted by Arts at the Old Fire Station features some of the best talent around.  Curator and Times dance critic Donald Hutera has assembled a four-day line-up of short works for intimate spaces, cherry-picking four enticingly varied evenings of multi-generational talent from the UK and abroad, mainly but not exclusively the work of a group of fascinating and independent female artists. Local performers Ana Barbour, Susie Crow, Cecilia Macfarlane, Anuradha Chaturvedi, Jane Connelly, Anja Meinhardt and Roosa Leimu-Brown are joined by national and international names such as Jemima Foxtrot and Mara Vivas.   Performances will be refreshingly unconventional and always eclectic: expect the unexpected!

Performances:  Wednesday 13th – Saturday 16th July 7.30pm

Venue:  The Old Fire Station, 40 George Street, Oxford OX1 2AQ

Tickets:  £10/£8 from www.ticketsoxford.com or 01865 305305.

Programme:

Wed 13th:  Ana Barbour, Jane Connelly (Smidgen Dance Company), Lorna V, Richard Chappell, Susan Kempster, and Jemima Foxtrot

Thurs 14th: Lorna V, Ana Barbour, Arunima Kumar, Susie Crow (Avid for Ovid), Salah El-Brogy, Sarah Kent (Dysfunctional Dance), and Hanna Wroblewski

Fri 15th:  Lorna V, Susie Crow, Sarah Kent, Mara Vivas with My Johansson,  Anuradha Chaturvedi Seth, and Sue Lewis (Ffin Dance)

Sat 16th: Lorna V, Mara Vivas with My Johansson, Sarah Kent, Sue Lewis (Ffin Dance), Anja Meinhardt (Justice in Motion) with Roosa Leimu-Brown

More programme information here: www.oldfirestation.org.uk | 01865 263980

 

 

 

Drishti Dance presents Chaturang, Pegasus Theatre Saturday 11th June 2016

A welcome performance at the Pegasus by Drishti Dance led by exquisite Kathak dancer Anuradha Chaturvedi, showing recently developed works.  Chaturang, or the four colours, is an exploration of the vast breadth and versatility of the traditional Indian form Kathak through a dynamic quartet of dance works, each varied in characteristics, yet uniquely beautiful.  This production is an experiment in adapting the dance form not only to explore varied narrative styles, but also to emphasize its vast breadth and versatility.
Dramatic in essence,  Mohini dips into the ancient Puranic story to present a ballad.  Laya Anulaya (la-ei Anu-la-ei), an in-depth technical study, is an inward facing narrative, a dialogue between the percussionist and dancer.  Panchatva, explores the connections between the elements and human senses, re-imagining the Nritta (pure dance) aspect of Kathak in tandem with Digital Media.  Antaraal is a contemporary Kathak work bringing together movement, music and poetic text by Mohan Rana, exploring the journey through time and the spaces between. (First seen at Pegasus in Moving With the Times in February 2016).

Concept and Choreography – Anuradha Chaturvedi
Dancers – Aiyana Tandon, Anuradha Chaturvedi, Anju Rajukumar, Meena Anand, Sonali Sibal Alim, Sarika Shah and Shyam Patel
Poem (Antaraal) – Mohan Rana
Tabla – Amritpal Singh
Santoor – Kaviraj Singh
Music – Malcolm Atkins, Gulshan Bharati
Rhythm Compositions (Laya Anulaya) – Late Arjun Mishra, Vikas Mishra and Anuradha Chaturvedi
Costumes – Shruti Mohan
Images – Anand Muthuswamy

Date:  Saturday 11th June 2016, 7.30pm

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

Tickets: £13, £9 concessions, £6 under 18s, (£1 off for Dancin’ Oxford Pass holders)

Book online here, or call the Box Office on 01865 812150

Find out more about Drishti Dance here

 

GOlive Oxford Burton Taylor Studio 18th July – Nicholas Minns reviews

Critic turned critic-entrepreneur Donald Hutera is creating and curating opportunities for dancers to perform who might otherwise have few occasions to show their work. Oxford is a first for GOlive and there is a further outing at the Chesil Theatre in Winchester on July 24. The venues are small — the original GOlive venue at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre in Kentish Town holds 60 people and the Burton-Taylor studio seats 50 — but their intimacy works well for the small-scale works Hutera is presenting. One of the advantages of this proximity is the value given to the subtleties of communication; there are elements of this evening’s program that provide a master class in the art of integrating the head and eyes in the moving body, a vital aspect that is all too often overlooked in dance training.

 

Dance Traditions with a Mythical Bite: GOlive Festival 2015 Burton Taylor Studio 17th July – Barbara Berrington reflects

Getting a ticket to a dance programme arouses comfortable expectations of pleasure – of colour, patterning and conformity. In Oxford’s Burton Taylor studio last week, Donald Hutera’s GOlive programme was satisfyingly full of all of these – but it was also never predictable, oddly fragmented and often deeply unsettling. And in my head the after-images are of faces as much as of body shapes – a heat of emotional impact – a sense of hope – a touch of catharsis.

The very ordering of the programme forced strange juxtapositions. It began with what Shane Shambhu described as his “lecture-demonstration” – a cogent dance drama through which his personal narrative wove a coherent thread. Twenty-seven years of bharatanatyam dance gave his work an assured technical underpinning. But it was its immediacy and variety that made it so accessible to academic, pensioner and child in the fifty-strong studio audience. For this was a narrative that flowed by Nritta – by taps and clicks and thumps – through sounds vocal and guttural – as well as by the mime and dance of Natya, the shifting registers of formal delivery, of conversational English, of interactive name games and the musicality of Shane’s native Kerala tongue. Never before have I been more aware of dance as one member of so intimately interconnected a family of languages.

 

GOlive Festival 2015 Burton Taylor Studio 18th July 2015 – Philippa Newis reviews

We are up close and personal in the Burton Taylor Studio at the Oxford Playhouse.  Presenting dance in small space makes fresh demands on performers as well as those of us watching.  The proximity of the dancers intensifies the experience. The degree of intimacy is a little unsettling, but we are a friendly crowd and a warm camaraderie fuels goodwill.

Curated by Donald Hutera, GOlive is in its third year.  Introducing the programme Hutera is like a kid in a sweet shop and his enthusiasm is infectious.  All six works had something new to offer.  My Own Private Movie choreographed and performed by Susan Kempster involves some of the audience entering the performance space and engaging in very simple improvisations. Kempster gives us all MP3 players with unique soundtracks.  In something akin to my daily commute, my head and my body are in two different places.  And perhaps this is Kempster’s point, the delicious contradiction of social media: together and not together, caught between the virtual and the physical but unable to belong wholly to either.

 

Oxford Dance Forum presents: Dance Scratch Night, Old Fire Station, Tuesday 21 July 2015

On each Scratch Night at the Old Fire Station, local and regional theatre performers, comedians or dance artists perform works in progress for audiences to watch and give feedback on.  This month, DANCE SCRATCH takes place, supported by the wonderful organisation, Oxford Dance Forum (ODF) on Tuesday 21st July.  Dancers get a chance to try out works-in-progress in a safe space; for audiences it is an opportunity to see new dance work and give feedback.  Artists presenting on this occasion are Butoh group Cafe Reason, Paulette Mae, Anuradha Chaturvedi & Meena Anand, and Roosa Leimu-Brown & Anja Meinhardt.

 

Drishti Dance presents Aangika: Swindon Dance 22nd November, Norden Farm Centre 6th December 2014

Drishti Dance led by Anuradha Chaturvedi invites you to Aangika, its annual show case of Kathak choreographic works. The evening features Panchtatva – The five elements, an exquisite interpretation of the five elements and their association to our senses through a dynamic interaction of Kathak and digital media. The evening also features other contemporary and rare traditional Kathak compositions drawn from ancient Indian philosophy, mythology, folklore and mediaeval Indo-Persian literature.  Sweeping abstract body movement, complex rhythm patterns executed through fast paced foot stamps timed to precise mathematical cycles, and exquisite subtle emotive expressions, integrate seamlessly in a stunning display of the technical nuances of this classic dance form.