#dance-theatre

#dance-theatre

Mozart's opera The Magic Flute is long, running for about three hours, and possesses a famously convoluted plot, laden with esoteric philosophical concepts. It's very much a grown-up affair, but you wouldn't know it from Protein's simplified 75-minute dance-theatre adaptation, which is faithful to the original (well, mostly), highly entertaining and suitable for all ages. Certainly, the audience at the performance of Protein's The Magic Flute I attended at a packed The Place, an even mix of children and adults, appeared rapt throughout

Vlaemsch (chez moi) is Flemish-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's love letter to his native Flanders. Like so many love letters, it's full of anger, pain and recrimination. Its tone is by turns overblown, infuriated, accusatory, ironic and tender. It is, nonetheless, a love letter in the guise of a piece of dance-theatre. Cherkaoui's background is as complex as that of his native Flanders. He was born in Antwerp, the son of a Moroccan father and a Flemish mother;

One morning, playwright Vivienne Franzmann was queueing for a coffee when an argument broke out. A customer absolutely lost it, says Franzmann. She was demanding her drink, shouting and swearing, and the rest of us stood there not knowing what to do. When Franzmann got to the rehearsal studio, she shared the story with Frauke Requardt, a choreographer she had just started working with.

In spite of everything... we can give a gift of something wonderful to people, they can come and immerse themselves in a different world.