2Faced Dance Company's Outlands UK tour

Published: 27 May 2017
Reporter: Vera Liber

2Faced Dance Company Outlands Credit: Hemabharathy Palani

2Faced Dance Company will present Outlands a new triple bill of contemporary dance that celebrates some of the best up and coming female choreographers from India and the UK, on a UK tour.

Coming out of Arts Council England's Reimagine India programme, it features three new works by choreographers Hemabharathy Palani and Ronita Mookerji from India and Emma Jayne Park from the UK.

Inspired by the story of the Tulasi plant and tales of conflict, confrontation, jealousy and growth, Hemabharathy Palani’s Yashti is accompanied by the poetry of Andal and Akka Mahadevi and classical Indian music by Miguel Marin.

In Ronita Mookerji’s work WHO, the choreographer asks: "who am I? What defines me? Where do I belong? I feel this extreme sense of being stuck, confined and imprisoned but what is my true identity?"

Here Before Now by Emma Jayne Park explores grief, change and our relationship with home, inviting the audience on a journey of remembrance and evaluation, combining movement and text with live music created from everyday objects, composed Nik Paget-Thomlinson.

All three dance-makers are recipients of The Bench commissions, 2Faced Dance’s training initiatives for female choreographers.

Tamsin Fitzgerald, artistic director of 2Faced Dance Company, said, “as the world and arts sector wake up to the importance of equality across the board, our timely Outlands tour couldn’t be more poignant.

"It celebrates and showcases three young female choreographers and further highlights the need for programmes such as The Bench here in the UK and across the world. The work of these young choreographers, and their choreographic language, might not have been discovered or seen in the UK without them.

"There’s still more work to do, but Outlands gets us closer to our goal of equality across the contemporary dance sector. We welcome Hemabharathy, Ronita and Emma into the 2Faced Dance fold and thank all our supporters for making these choreographic opportunities come to light.”

*Some links, including Amazon, Stageplays.com, ATG Tickets, LOVEtheatre, BTG Tickets, Ticketmaster, The Ticket Factory, LW Theatres and QuayTickets, are affiliate links for which BTG may earn a small fee at no extra cost to the purchaser.

Are you sure?