Spring and summer at Dance City

Newcastle’s Dance City has announced its programme of performances for spring and summer 2017. There are national and local companies, family shows and edgy shows for adults, and explorations of political and social themes.

• 11 March
  Savages

  Newcastle-based choreographer Anthony Lo-Giudice and his company present his latest work. Romantic and wild, it conjures up folklore, history and the soil of the ancient landscape against a Nordic-noir soundtrack by Einar Selvik, founder of the band Wardruna.

  “For one hour,” Lo-Giudice said, “we want people to feel like they have stepped into a portal that has taken them back over 1000 years and they have become spectators in a series of unfolding scenes, both dark and beautiful.”

• 18 & 19 March
  Profundis and The Green House
  National Dance Company Wales
  

  Profundis by Roy Assaf asks questions about what things are, and what they are not, while in The Green House Caroline Finn takes the audience on a nostalgic journey through a twisted TV set, where characters discover the fine line between fantasy and reality.

• 31 March
  RUN
  2Faced Dance Company

  The all-male company performs three “explosive” works from three female choreographers, exploring the human response to fear.

• 22 April
  Getting Dressed
  Second Hand Dance

  The first family show of the season, for children aged 4-7 years, is a colourful dive into the texture and movement of the clothes we wear and how we wear them.

• 28 & 29 April
  MK ULTRA
  Rosie Kay Dance Company

  Rosie Kay is a new Dance City Associate Choreographic Dance Artist (see our news story of 14 December) and this piece is inspired by the bizarre realm of pop culture mind control conspiracies. MK ULTRA is a CIA code word for a real LSD fuelled brainwashing technique developed by the US military. Popular conspiracy theory believes that MK ULTRA is still active and programmes certain pop stars, such as Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, as puppets of the ‘Illuminati’, a shadowy elite intent on creating a New World Order of authoritarian world government.

  Appropriately it will feature Lady Gaga designer Gary Card's first costumes for contemporary dance.

• 7 May
  White Lullaby
  Padi Dapi Fish

  In its children’s show, the Lithuanian company tells the story of the journey of a little bunny who travels to a dream world and finds love and family isn’t always what we expect.

• 13 May
  Stepmother & Stepfather
  Arthur Pita

  A double bill in which folklore and fairy tales about the wickedness of step-parents are given some seriously grown up twists. Whilst in Stepmother, fairy tales distort into nightmares as familiar characters from Snow White to Hansel and Gretel are pursued by a force of monstrous and abusive stepmothers, Stepfather tells the grisly tale of a twisted family situation, inspired by the folk punk "Country Death Song" from cult American band Violent Femmes.

• 19 May
  Pitman & We Got the Beat
  Eliot Smith Dance Company

  Another of the new Dance City Associate Choreographic Dance Artists, Smith presents his dance work based on the Ashington Group of miners made famous in Lee Hall’s play The Pitmen Painters alongside an abstract work by Netherlands Dance Theatre ballet master Maurice Causey.

• 26 May
  Smother
  201 Dance Company

  Choreographer Andrea Walker directs of cast of seven dancers in a contemporary hip-hop performance which explores the relationship between two young men.

• 1 July
  Tarantiseismic
  National Youth Dance Company

  A new commission by Guest Artistic Director Damien Jalet for a company of 40 young dancers.

• 7 July
  Theseus Beefcake
  Paniclab

  A hero and minotaur are locked in the ultimate death match. Theseus Beefcake “journeys into the dark labyrinth of masculinity, colliding mixed martial arts, death metal, American frat culture, rodeos, pornography and Greek mythology along the way.” Presented as part of Curious? The LGBTQ Festival 2017.