performingartsincornwall

This is a highly dynamic physical theatre piece which is beautifully performed by a female company of 5 actor/dancers  and two live  musicians in a highly choreographed polemic set about the oppression of women in work.   The landscape is the polluted, industrialised Mexico-US border lands where labour is cheap, and women are exploited and routinely subjugated by the system, the police and the capitalists.  A group of adolescent children play as their mothers endure factory drudgery and 35 pesos a day breadline work.  The ensemble work is both thrilling and engaging with set piece emotional body expression particularly powerful and probably on its own a compelling reason to seei this show. The live music is provided by percussionist Haruna Komatsu and singer/guitar strummer Shamira Turner who also embodies the fat cat hierarchy of boss, police officer, major and presidents.  The lead is the convincing Milagros Tamsin Clarke - child of the streets and the protagonist who sets out o

Radouan Mrziga is the performer. The producing centre the Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre -  Mrziga is a Moroccan born,  Brussels based dancer whose show called "55" is a solo dance performance conceptual in nature around the topic of the human body as an instrument of measurement.  6 ancient cassette players are placed around the dance area and  are started by the dancer at various cues in the dance sequence Intermittently -simultaneously recorded linear soundtracks . The sounds are indistinct music as if from the kasbah as if played on a poorly a tuned car radio in a taxi.  This continues sequentially "around" the space for the duration of the performance with long pauses of silence in between.  It suggests a middle eastern or Arabic environment. The "dance" consists of a routine of, at first inexplicable, physical jerks executed in a pattern, with rippling arabesque movements in the arms as if the dancer were playing a game of incomplete hopscotch.  As th

Its a wet Februany Saturday in Newlyn Cornwall and dynamic Cornwall youth dance group All Boys Dance and Panta Rei Danse Teater,  the Norwegian dance company  are about to perform the outcomes of the ground breaking mini-residency on the Wharves and in The Centre in Newlyn.   Panta Rei Danse Teater are now regular visitors to Cornwall thanks to Carn to Cove - they have performed  "I Wish Her Well"; "House Gran Nabo",  "We Fiction and Private Rites" in spaces from the Lisekerret Centre, to the Guildhall St Ives   .  This time they  performed with a 3  male dancers and two brilliant live musicians cellist (Gustavo Tavares)  and pianist/composer (Sverre Indris Joner)  on stage a work called "Lullaby" Lullaby explores the prickly relationships that men and boys develop in their friendship groups....joshing, messing about, facing off, fighting.     The male subject matter of the dance "Lullaby" was the springboard for Rob Mennear and Suz

Fagin’s Twist is a high energy, dynamic dance performance of a new narrative dance in two acts which investigates the characters and reconsiders the perspectives of Dickens’s Oliver Twist.   This is a touring piece a co-production of The Place and commissioned by Theatre Bristol, East London Dance, Pavilion Dance South West, and Dance East. The Barbican’s programmer has identified the quality of the offer, integrated it into the outreach education programme in Plymouth and the region with impressive results and sold out to a diverse audience for work which would otherwise be difficult to access The experience of the choreographer Tony Adiguin and the company members  in commercial dance project was evident in the highly rehearsed and finished quality, extremely high production values, immaculate acrobatics and individual skills  with simple lighting and impressive mobile set which made the project constantly visually arresting.    This is not to diminish the creative thought put i

Concert at St Mary’s Church, Penzance  14 th January 2017 West and rural  Cornwall had a humdinger of a musical weekend.  You could not get better concerts in some of the great cities.  First the superb Craig Ogden, the classical guitarist born in Australia, who is now one of the best exponents of his instrument in the UK returned for the fourth time (!)  to Portscatho  to give another  rammed recital for the discriminating Roseland Music Society. Second a Symphony Concert  in St Mary’s Church.Penzance  of the Music of that revolutionary romantic Hector Berlioz which included  his Symphony Fantastique and (one of my favourite concert works for soprano and orchestra) Nuits d’Ete.     This concert clashed with a pianist playing at Truro Three Arts – Cornwall is not short of musical highlights if you have the determination to unveil them.  All would do better to post on Cornwall Music Networks free website to encourage new audience. I missed the Opening Hungarian Dance, pace t