Battersea Arts Centre Archives

Contemporary Dance 2.0 – Battersea Arts Centre

27Oct

By Maani WayNo Comments

London

Contemporary Dance 2.0 – Battersea Arts Centre

Performed by Shechter II and produced by the Hofesh Shechter Company, Contemporary Dance 2.0 is a performance that bursts with an eclectic range of dance styles and full body movement, showcasing the talents of eight incredible dancers. The audience are launched into the action with a shock opening, the dancers in impressive synchronisation. The routine is split into five different sections, a clever way to keep the audience’s interest and to tell the story. Repetitive movements as an ensemble are in perfect unison and are hugely impactful and exciting. Each dancer is unique in their own way and draw the audience’s attention to them at different stages. This performance is definitely an ensemble piece, but the choreography and spacing gives each member the opportunity to shine. ...

27Mar

By Riana HowarthNo Comments

London

Psychodrama – Battersea Arts Centre

Sleepwalk Collective and Christopher Brett Bailey’s experimental piece is a fusion of titillation, poetic imagery and philosophical exploration. From the get-go, there is an overt sense that we are audience members with an assumed passive role, and we are reminded of the undulating relationship between the collective and our anonymity. It feels like we are slowly spacing out into a nebulous, creative void. There is terror and excitement and freshness, and we feel oddly safe as we enter it, guided by the two characters (Christopher and Lara) who feel just as lost as we are. Fragmented and episodic, the script is disorientating as it whispered through headphones, both soothing and unsettling like an ASMR. Its ambiguous storyline begins to piece together later in the play. With evocative, ...

24Feb

By Khushboo ShahNo Comments

London

Uncanny Valley – Battersea Arts Centre

Theatre has been pedestaled, historically, to create a sense of empathy within audiences. We identify with the players on stage. If the production is stirring enough, we end up following the performers’ breath patterns. But, what if the actor on stage is a robot? Would we still feel empathy? Would we still be able to release emotions or scramble for answers to explain our reality? Rimini Protokoll’s Uncanny Valley subverts the position of theatre and human existence by casting a lifelike animatronic model of Thomas Melle, the writer of The World at My Back. Conceived, written, and directed by Stefan Kaegi, Rimini Protocoll once again uses a novel and disruptive form to raise questions on human conditioning and its dependency on machines- “Are we human by our randomness?” Or are we just lik...

The Body Remembers – Battersea Arts Centre

24Oct

By Alice RoseNo Comments

London

The Body Remembers – Battersea Arts Centre

‘The Body Remembers’ created and performed by Heather Agyepong in collaboration with Fuel, creates a space to view ‘The Mover’ realising and releasing from their trauma. This piece opens a conversation in how the body has memory of trauma where the mind may forget, how the body will create physical responses which may not have any explanation other than the trauma of its experience. Focusing particularly on the experience of Black British women in trauma recovery we watch The Mover express through ‘Authentic Movement’ whilst her shadow follows her lead through a large projector, bold beautiful colours combined with simplistic images and quotes from women playing overhead, which seem planted at just the right moments. Knowing that the Mover is reacting through improvisation seems all the...

Philharmonia Sessions: Beethoven’s Prometheus – Battersea Arts Centre

6Dec

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

London

Philharmonia Sessions: Beethoven’s Prometheus – Battersea Arts Centre

Presented in the month of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra playing Beethoven's famous ballet The Creatures of Prometheus. In this version, each symphonic movement is punctuated by Stephen Fry explaining the part of the story about to be told, aided by animation by Hillary Leben and a script by Gerard McBurney. Beethoven wrote his hugely popular ballet score in 1801, in just 11 days and, as Fry tells us, the version of the ancient Greek creation story he used is not the most widely established one about Prometheus giving man fire. In this version Prometheus creates man with fire from Mount Olympus and then calls on Apollo, god of music and dance, the Muses, and a host of other deities to teach his Creatures what it is to ex...