✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper 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
  • Kids
  • Benefits
  • Membership
  • Get Started
  • Membership
  • Benefits
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Dance

Yorke Dance Project, TWENTY Review ★★★★★

14 May 19 – 17 May 19, 14 May at 18:30; 15 May at 18:00; 17 May at 19:00 Dur. varies No performance 16 May

Yorke Dance Project TWENTY at the ROH Clore Studio is an anniversary programme that features MacMIllan’s Playground and a new work by the 94-year-old Robert Cohan

By Teresa Guerreiro on 17/5/2019

Yorke Dance Project in Kenneth MacMillan's Playground, photo Pari Naderi
Yorke Dance Project in Kenneth MacMillan's Playground, photo Pari Naderi
Yorke Dance Project, TWENTY Review 4 Yorke Dance Project, TWENTY Review Teresa Guerreiro
Yorke Dance Project’s 20th anniversary programme at the Royal Opera House’s intimate Clore Studio, TWENTY, was so profoundly atmospheric it induced total absorption.


From the dark mood of a mental asylum in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Playground through the religious abandon of Robert Cohan’s Communion; from a penetrating inquiry into a relationship between two people in Sophia Stoller’s Between and Within to Yolande Yorke- Edgell’s homage to her masters in Imprint, Yorke Dance Project’s TWENTY was satisfyingly meaty and varied.


Rarely performed since its 1979 debut, MacMillan’s Playground (pictured above) is a powerful piece of dance theatre, inspired by the choreographer’s interest in the dividing line between sanity and madness, the result of his own lengthy foray into psychoanalysis and his mother’s epilepsy.


The playground of the title is the common room of an asylum, where a group of vacant-eyed inmates replicate everyday relationships and power games in haphazard and distorted ways. Alliances form and are broken by interlopers. Bursts of expressionistic dance dissolve into nothingness. A gesture of hope gives way to the slouching of despair.


Set to a dissonant, occasionally crashing, often menacing score by Gordon Crosse, Playground portrays its subjects with a mix of curiosity and compassion that truly gets under your skin.


It’s impossible to overstate the influence of Robert Cohan in the development of contemporary dance in Britain, and Communion shows us exactly why.




Yorke Dance Project in Robert Cohan's Communion, photo Pari Naderi

Now 94-years-old, Cohan became the first artistic director of The Place in 1967 and has been instrumental in developing the form. His choreography builds on the Martha Graham school in which he was trained, but goes beyond to create a style all his own.


Communion is Cohan’s sixth work for Yorke Dance Project. A large-scale ensemble for nine dancers – YDP’s own plus invited guests – it is a concentrated meditation on religious feeling, incorporating ritual gestures associated with a number of religions.


It starts with the full ensemble slowly walking up and down stage in a line. At intervals one or two individuals drop off the formation. They raise arms and eyes to heaven before being reabsorbed into the line. Eventually the line gives way to other formations. The dancers fall on their knees; or they take up the typical posture of Eastern mediation.


To a score predominantly by Nils Frahm, that alternates between dreamy landscapes and forceful chords, Communion' s rigorous and expansive choreography – core contractions, tilted arabesques, fully extended arms – allows smaller groups and solos dancers to express varying tinges of religious feeling. It's a meticulous work of wondrous clarity.


Between and Within is a short new work where the LA-based dance-maker Sophia Stoller considers the complex dynamics of relationships between two people through two couples. Sometimes they mirror each other, sometimes they exchange partners. Their gaze is a permanent interrogation. Set to a specially commissioned score by Justin Scheid, it’s an accomplished and intriguing vignette.


The programme ends with Yolande Yorke-Edgell’s Imprint, her homage to the people who’ve had a determining influence in her career as a dancer and choreographer: Robert Cohan, Bella Lewitzky and Richard Alston.




A sequence of dances for groups of varying numbers, it relies perhaps too much on recorded voices making considerations on dance, what it is, what it’s for; and it transparently borrows from Yorke-Edgell’s mentors. It’s uneven and over-long, but ends in such a glorious pastiche of Richard Alston’s dances, with their fluid, vibrant, joyous movement, that some of its longueurs are promptly forgotten.


by Teresa Guerreiro

What Yorke Dance Project, TWENTY Review
Where Royal Opera House, Bow Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 9DD | MAP
Nearest tube Covent Garden (underground)
When 14 May 19 – 17 May 19, 14 May at 18:30; 15 May at 18:00; 17 May at 19:00 Dur. varies No performance 16 May
Price £10-£20
Website Click to book



Most popular

Culture to see you through the weekend
Things to do in London this weekend: 22 - 24 January
Olly Alexander in It's A Sin, Channel 4 (Photo: Channel 4)
It's A Sin, Channel 4 review
Jessie Buckley in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Netflix (Photo: Netflix)
Oscars 2021 predictions: what will be nominated?

Editor's Picks

No Woman's Land. Avatâra Ayuso, UKI (c) Adam Dreessen
AVA Dance Company, No Woman's Land Review
Cas Public, 9 photo Damien Siqueiros
Cas Public, 9, Linbury Review
Lost Dog, Juliet & Romeo, photo Tristram Kenton
Ben Duke, Juliet & Romeo, Wilton's Music Hall
BalletBoyz, Them/Us (c) George PIper
BalletBoyz, Them/Us, Vaudeville Theatre Review
MADHEAD, NYDC photo Manuel Vason
NYDC/Botis Seva, MADHEAD Review
A Festival of Korean Dance, Somoo, photo Kunu Kim
A Festival of Korean Dance, The Place
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

We recommend nearby

  • Dominique Ansel Treehouse
    Read more...
    Map
  • Parsons

    Parsons is a thoroughly old-fashioned spot, with a maroon-tiled facade, a white tiled interior and antique mirrors on which are written their daily changing selection of fresh whole fish which make up most of the mains. We love it.

    Book Map
  • Homeslice, Fitzrovia

    Laid back in its concept and style, the restaurant's premise is simple: delicious 20-inch pizzas, which can also be ordered by individual slice. Homeslice draws a relaxed crowd, and is remarkably good value. Eating at this no cutlery/paper plates pizzeria can be a joyously messy affair.

    Read more...
    Book Map

ROH

Clore Studio

Yorke Dance Project

TWENTY

Robert Cohan

Kenneth MacMillan

Sophia Stoller

Yolande Yorke-Edgell



  • 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
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×