| A Look-back and Guide |
National Dance Company Wales |
| The Best of Dance , Culture of Wales , November 5, 2025 |
Productions of National Dance Company Wales are reviewed below:28 October 2024: Gorwelion/ Frontiers “Restraint and recklessness are conveyed both by the staccato breaking of the strip light into segments that work their way across the stage and through the dancers’ movement, often in Flying Low and Contact influenced styles, working low or floor level - dancers rolling, lifting or bouncing off each other – they are strong and good at this kind of movement.” * * * * 05 May 2019: Tundra, After Image, Reveller's Mass “But this next section was even more ingenious, movement-wise, since the dancers - almost always physically linked - perform impossible, sometimes virtuoso feats of sequential or unison movement somehow marrying the opposite qualities of staccato and fluid. At one point their linked arms become one snaking rope, tying itself in knots and unravelling into a one smooth, sinuous line.” * * * * 23 October 2018: Passion “The dancers also use the yellow ochre cloth, twisting and untwisting, they people the penumbra, manipulating, mocking and echoing the tension between the two protagonists. They move almost continuously and with tremendous energy and commitment, though there is little dynamic contrast. Less is sometimes more, choreographically speaking, and a little stillness can speak louder than constant movement, but this is choreographic, the dancers were all excellent. Outstanding, the powerful and lyrical dancing of Nikita Goile especially.” * * * * 14 March 2018: Folk, Tundra, Atalay “In movement it is grace versus disjunction. The spirit of Dionysus bursts over into madness. In sound “Folk” begins with Offenbach and proceeds to the high contrast of musical composition from Greece to the Carpathians. The visual impact is underpinned by Joe Fletcher's design. A giant tree hangs over the left side of the stage. It is all at the same time rooted and uprooted. Its metaphorical suggestion for a community in a place of unique historical drift is considerable.” * * * * 17 November 2017: They Seek to Find the Happiness They Seem, Omerta, Beside Himself, Animatorium “The amplified beat of a clock, whispered words in Italian, loud admonitions “shhhh!”accompany four women (Angela Boix Duran, Camille Giraudeau, Elena Thomas, Marine Tournet) in half-light and in black. They are wetted by water from four buckets, the only prop. They briefly attain an expression of ecstatic freedom before return to their status of veiled anonymity. Omerta is the expression of a social order that places clan before external authority. It is expression of the Hobbesian paradox that freedom is to be found within constraint provided by the state.” * * * * 03 March 2017: The Green House, Profundis “It is the nature of metaphor that it be both, and simultaneously, concrete and suggestive. “The Green House” has a double inside-outside division. The set, elaborate for a touring dance show, has a pair of swing doors and large sash windows. Supplicants stand forlornly the far side of the window wishing and being denied entry. But the set is also a set itself. Its wall extends into untreated woodwork. Its artificiality is shown by a dancer taking a ladder and poking her head over the top. An illuminated sign declares that the dance is itself a performance for television. The unseen makers indicate the time for applause.” * * * * 30 September 2016: Folk "Finn treats us to a series of dances, many of which developed from “individual dancer explorations of their particular character. Movement conversations appear and disappear. Mood and movement vocabulary shift all the time, from gorgeous very physical duets to languid Hofesh Shechter-like group shuffling and more. You never know quite what is coming next. Best are the scenes where everyone comes together, or where everyone else stops for a particular couple or trio, especially that to music by Mkis Theodorakis (the music is as varied as the dance).” * * * * 28 January 2012: B/olero, Black Milk, The Grammar of Silence “The result is delicious as he and lighting designer Yaron Abulafia create a language of yearning and rejection. This most theatrical and satisfying piece proves a showcase for dancer Gareth Mole and a gripping vehicle for this integrated body of dancers.” * * * * 12 October 2011: Quixoteland, B/ olero, Phantoms of Us “Phantoms of Us lays things bare, quite literally, as the semi-naked dancers rhythmically move between the figurative solos and impassioned ensembles of one of the company’s own dancers. Eleesha Drennan’s compelling choreography combines well with a frisky jazz soundtrack and the bold, provocative projections of naked torsos from Welsh artist Sue Williams.” * * * * 25 September 2011: Quixoteland, B/ olero, Phantoms of Us “We now turn to NDC Wales’ raison d’être, bold yet accessible non-narrative dance, performed by a company that has done so much to shatter barriers between audiences and this richly rewarding art form. “Phantoms of Us is a disturbing, gripping work by artist Sue Williams and Company dancer and choreographer Eleesha Drennan. Dancers emerge from projected images of Sue Williams’ characteristic life size paintings and in shape-revealing body stockings luxuriate in their physicality and the body form.” * * * * 31 January 2011: By Singing Light, Quixoteland “By Singing Light” choreographed by Stephen Petronio is in contrast less immediately accessible. A closer, more intimate choreography accompanies the score commissioned from Son Lux. Over twenty-five minutes it is at times florid, at times sonorous, at times accompanied by a choir, at times with a solo vocalist of a Nico-like sombreness.” * * * * 24 January 2011: Quixoteland “It is the classic theme of outsiders (the woman geographically and the man psychologically) whose difference causes hostility but whose commitment is finally rewarded with acceptance. The establishment characters dress in black or grey but the woman who comes as a catalyst of change discards her cloak to reveal a vibrant green dress and glorious red hair.” * * * * 02 February 2010: Veil of Stars, Romance Inverse “The intention of Andonis Foniadakis’ choreography is to eschew narrative “to create a dreamy universe, a sensation of the universe that, in a theatrical sense, is beyond purely real time and physical space.” |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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