2Faced Dance, EVERYTHING [but the girl], The Place

2Faced Dance is an all-male urban contemporary dance company – a vibrant, athletic group of five outstanding dancers, working under the direction of its founder Tamsin Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald’s aim when she founded the company was to make dance more accessible to young people, to inspire them to come to performances and even take up dance themselves.

Spool forward a couple of decades and 2Faced Dance is celebrating its 20th anniversary, having acquired an enthusiastic following, and not only of young people…

The title of 2Faced Dance's anniversary programme, EVERYTHING [but the girl] is a play on words: Fitzgerald remembers growing up in the 90s listening to the band Everything but the Girl; and the anniversary programme, she says, brings together 'EVERYTHING'; whereas '[but the girl]' refers to the fact that she’s created 90% of the company’s work so far.

Tamsin Fitzgerald authors two of the works in the anniversary triple bill, with the third coming from Fleur Darkin, until recently director of Scottish Dance Theatre.

Fitzgerald has re-imagined her highly charged work 7.0, created after her humanitarian visit to Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake. It’s a powerful and disturbing work, with choreography that, like so many of her works, demands feats of skill and endurance from her dancers.

The film and TV composer Alex Baranowski provides the score for 7.0, as well as a new composition for Fitzgerald’s second work of the evening: Hollow in a World Too Full. This is a rare solo (two company dancers will take it on on alternate evenings) that follows a man’s journey through a world too full.

Fleur Darkin’s The Qualies, to a score yet to be announced, is a theatrical collaboration with the estate of the late American author David Foster-Wallace to bring his study of the tennis player Michael Joyce to life as a dance for four men. It is ultimately an exploration of the gruelling work required to be truly great at something.

The performances of EVERYTHING [but the girl] at The Place feature live music played by members of Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

Age Guidance: 11+