On your toes for a feast of dance
GET ready to experience the exhilarating power of dance at Edge Hill University’s Arts Centre this month.
Presenting new and exciting touring performances, professional dance companies Sweetshop Revolution, Mapdance, Akademi and Company Chameleon will all be taking to the stage to thrill audiences.
Featuring five distinctly gifted young female dancers, Sweetshop Revolution’s BEAUTiFUL (tonight) is award-winning choreographer-director Sally Marie’s fourth full-length dance theatre work.
It promises to be a passionate, vivid journey into women’s experiences of sex, love, desire and power.
Sweetshop Revolution was nominated for Best Independent Company at The National Dance Awards 2016 and their recent piece I Loved You And I Loved You (also performed at the Arts Centre) was nominated Best Dance production 2015.
Mapdance (tomorrow, March 2) offers a varied set of exciting commissions of new works by renowned and upcoming international contemporary choreographers.
This year’s artists include Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor (Israel), Laila Diallo (UK), Laura Aris Alvarez (Belgium/ Spain) and Helen Parlor (UK).
Mapdance’s diverse repertoire offers audiences a refreshing mixture of gritty dance-theatre, wry humour, and intricate and questioning choreography.
The nine dynamic young dancers include 2016 Edge Hill Dance graduate, Rachel Hancock.
The evening will also include a curtain raiser by Edge Hill University’s male & female dance companies: EdgeFWD and 3rdEDGE.
Archive and new silent film footage, an evocative soundscore and powerful dance tell a 100-year-old Hindi short story from WWI.
Based on Chandradhar Sharma Guleri’s story Usne Kaha Tha, Akademi’s The Troth (March 13) is about one soldier, Sardar Lehna Singh, and the sacrifice he makes to keep his secret promise to an unrequited love while mid-conflict in the horror of the trenches of Belgium.
The Troth is directed and choreographed by award-winning Gary Clarke, whose most recent work, COAL, was based on the miners’ strike and the cast includes Vidya Patel, finalist in the BBC Young Dancer of the Year 2015.
The production is part of UK-India Year of culture and Re-imagine India.
Performing “a triple bill of its time” Manchester’s Company Chameleon, celebrates 10 years with a UK tour anniversary production on March 15.
Through powerful and original dance and movement, the international touring company, will tell three stories of masculinity, love and selfdeception.
Both retrospective and up-to-theminute, 10 features Rites, the male duet that launched Company Chameleon a decade ago, alongside two new works by the company’s co-founders: Imprint by Kevin Edward Turner and Trip by Anthony Missen. Now a full time dancer with Company Chameleon since 2015, is Edge Hill’s dance graduate Theo Fapohunda.
The evening will also include a curtain raiser by Edge Hill University’s male dance company: EdgeFWD.
All performances will take place at The Arts Centre, Edge Hill University, St Helens Road, Ormskirk. For tickets call 01695 584480 or visit www.edgehill. ac.uk/artscentre