✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper plus a pair of free tickets to a London event sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper


Sign up by Email or Facebook.

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we sent newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Turning tips into memories

Get started Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • About us
  • Tickets
  • Membership
  • Get Started
  • Membership
  • Tickets
Get our exclusive content
+ choose a pair of free tickets from our edit of favourite events
Dance

Alston at Home, The Place ★★★★★

10 Jun 15 – 13 Jun 15, 8:00 PM – 10:15 PM

A varied and enjoyable programme at The Place marks the 20th anniversary of the Richard Alston Dance Company. It should not be missed!

By Teresa Guerreiro on 11/6/2015

Mazur - Jonathan Goddard, Liam Riddick, photo by Tony Nandi
Mazur - Jonathan Goddard, Liam Riddick, photo by Tony Nandi
Alston at Home, The Place 4 Alston at Home, The Place Teresa Guerreiro
Richard Alston at Home review: Culture Whisper says ★★★★★


Every so often a performer comes along whose stage presence and sheer charisma stay with us long after the performance has ended. Jonathan Goddard is one such; and his participation as a guest dancer in this 20th anniversary programme of the Richard Alston Dance Company brings an extra boost to what is already a good, at times exhilarating programme.

Goddard and the company’s own Liam Riddick are the sole performers in Mazur, Richard Alston’s latest piece which premiered on Thursday. Set to a series of Chopin mazurkas, this 15 minute duet is described by Alston himself as “a dance for two friends sharing what they love and what the feel they have lost.”

It’s constructed along the lines of a classical pas-de-deux, with an opening sequence for both dancers, followed by individual variations and a finale for both again.

Jonathan Goddard’s body is slight and neat, his movement meticulous, his lines superb. It’s the intensity of his gaze, though, his unwavering connection with his stage partner that brings his performance to quite a different level. Put simply, he is entrancing. Liam Riddick, himself an excellent dancer, responds well and the two dancers – Goddard in a blood-red satin waistcoat and Riddick in blue – are perfectly matched.

For those 15 minutes alone the evening would have been worth it.

There is, however, a lot more to this programme, most of it the kind of hugely satisfying performance we’ve come to expect from Alston and his superb dancers.

The evening starts with the high-octane Opening Gambit by the company’s Associate Choreographer Martin Lawrence. Set to Julia Wolfe’s pulsating music, this is a short piece for 10 dancers organised in groups that blend and separate, shape and reshape at high speed. It builds very much on Alston’s own choreographic language but accelerates it sometimes to vertiginous speeds. The dancers appear to relish the challenge.

Brisk Singing is a duet by Richard Alston on enrapturing music from Rameau’s Boreades. Full of sweeping movements, arms often raised to heaven, the piece communicates a sense of yearning, an almost mystical aspiration. On this occasion it was danced by two guest dancers from Michigan University who, we felt were a little colder and less expressive than the piece required.

Alston is aware of the need to create a path to the future; and to that end he has been giving choreographic opportunities to young, up-and-coming artists, some from his own company. This programme includes two such pieces, Rasengan, by Alston dancer Ihsaan de Banya and Unease by Joseph Toonga.

Rasengan is a trio for two men and a woman. It is a dark, experimental work, danced mostly to static and concrete music, again building on the style of the Master, but moving it forward. Unease is perhaps less successful, its blend of jerking hip-hop movement never quite blending well with the contemporary choreographic language Toonga appropriates.

The evening ends with Alston’s own Overdrive, to Terry Riley’s minimalist Keyboard Studies #1

It is an ensemble piece for the company’s 10 dancers, which perfectly illustrates Alston’s musicality, his ability to shape his choreography to the demands of his music, so that the two are inseparable and enhance each other.

The dancers come in groups, three women in bright red flowing pyjamas, the men in luminous grey, another set of women in grey and shocking pink. The dance, always flowing, is in fact a complicated mathematical set of point and counterpoint, meticulously crafted to fit the melodic fragments of the score.

This is a hugely entertaining programme and one that should not be missed for its variety, sheer joy, ability to engage brain and heart, and of course, the opportunity to see a splendid set of dancers with the outstanding Jonathan Goddard as a very special bonus.

Here’s to Richard Alston’s next 20 years!




by Teresa Guerreiro

What Alston at Home, The Place
Where The Place, 17 Duke's Road, London, WC1H 9PY | MAP
Nearest tube Euston (underground)
When 10 Jun 15 – 13 Jun 15, 8:00 PM – 10:15 PM
Price ££18
Website Click here to book via The Place

You might also like
Free for Members
A Gatsby Christmas, London Cabaret Club
Free pairs of tickets available
10 Dec 19 - 18 Dec 19

A Gatsby Christmas

Members only All booked All booked

Most popular

UK Disneyland? Paramount Theme Park, Kent. Photo: Paramount
Everything you need to know about UK Disneyland, Kent's London Resort
Things to do in London this weekend: 13 – 15 December
Things to do in London this weekend: 13 – 15 December
Ring in 2020: London's Best New Year's Eve Parties
Ring in 2020: London's Best New Year’s Eve parties to book early

A little more...

  • More on Richard Alston Dance Company

    Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the Richard Alston Dance Company has become an unmissable reference point for contemporary dance in the UK.

    It started just after Richard Alston became Artistic Director of the Place in 1994. Alston had choreographed his first piece nearly 30 years before, while still a student at the London Contemporary Dance School.

    Having his own company allowed Alston to develop his very own and now unmistakable choreographic language, characterised by his profound musicality and the ability to make often complicated, meticulously crafted movement appear simple and always flowing.

    It also allowed him to build a small group of outstanding dancers who understand his work and relish performing it.

    Alston has choreographed around 40 dances for his company, as well as a growing number of commissions for other companies, both in Britain and abroad.

    Richard Alston Dance Company is part of The Place and its dancers work there alongside students of the London Contemporary Dance School.

review

contemporary dance

Jonathan Goddard

You might like

  • Torobaka: Akram Khan and Israel Galvan, by Jean-Louis Fernandez

    Akram Khan | Israel Galvàn: TOROBAKA, Sadler's Wells ★★★★★

  • Matthew Bourne Ballet: The Car Man (c) Bill Cooper

    Matthew Bourne's The Car Man, Sadler's Wells ★★★★★

  • Hussein Chalayan: Gravity Fatigue

    Gravity Fatigue: Hussein Chalayan, Sadler's Wells ★★★★★

  • m¡longa

    m¡longa, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: Sadler's Wells

  • The Culture Whisper team
  • What is Culture Whisper membership
  • Corporate membership
  • Give a gift membership
  • Retrieve a gift membership
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs

BECOME A MEMBER TODAY
TO CONTINUE TO ENJOY CULTURE WHISPER

You’ve clicked to view the best of our content that we
save exclusively for our members.

If you liked what you saw, subscribe from just £15 and get
unlimited access to our unique culture service as well as
all of our membership benefits.

BECOME A MEMBER ×

Want a pair of free tickets every month?
Upgrade to Gold Whisper now
and save 10% with GOLD10.
Become a premium member today.

UPGRADE NOW ×