Richard Alston Dance Company, Oxford Playhouse 1st May – Thomas Stell reviews

The Richard Alston Dance Company brings a triple bill to the Oxford Playhouse that shows the typical musicality of its founder’s work. The diversity of the evening’s composers prompts a corresponding diversity in the dance, seen in the opening two pieces, Alston’s own, and the third, that of his associate Martin Lawrance.

Buzzing Round the Hunnisuccle is set to three works by contemporary composer Jo Kondo. There is an austerity, an unemotional quality in them that the dance matches very well. The dancers’ bodies form one shape after another, sculptural, athletic seeming poses with arms widely extended.

 

Richard Alston Dance Company at Oxford Playhouse, 30th April &1st May 2013 – Maggie Watson reviews

In the programme, Richard Alston quotes Balanchine’s statement “see the music, hear the dance”, and the music that he invites us to “see” in this triple bill is typically diverse:  Jo Kondo for Buzzing Round the Hunnisuccle; Mozart and Ferruccio Busoni for Unfinished Business, and finally Julia Wolfe for Martin Lawrance’s work Madcap.

I saw this programme twice, once from the Stalls and once from the Circle, and each was a completely different experience. 

 

Richard Alston Dance Company at Oxford Playhouse 30th April-1st May 2013

Acclaimed choreographer Richard Alston’s company returns to Oxford Playhouse on Tuesday 30 April and Wednesday 1 May with a mixed bill of stunning dance.

Unfinished Business is danced to Mozart’s beautiful and flowing unfinished piano sonata Opus K533, and Gigue in D, accompanied by a live pianist. In Buzzing Round the Hunnisucle, Alston combines two contrasting pieces of music by Kondo in a dance of nimble and breathtaking precision.  The bill is completed by a new work by Martin Lawrence  entitled Madcap. This startling original piece is accompanied by music from ultra-cool New York band, Bang on a Can All-Stars.