Dance Umbrella Digital Programme

Choreographers and Directors: Lea Anderson, Sabina Bockova, Hugo Glendinning, Rosemary Lee, Hetain Patel, Johana Pockova, Abby Zbikowski

An annual fixture on London’s dance calendar, Dance Umbrella brings together live and online content, celebrating a wealth of international talent. The eclectic programme features everything from animation shorts to live talks and extended dance pieces. The aim is to showcase upcoming choreographers and performers as well as more established talent.

This year, Dance Umbrella’s online programme really digs into the international theme. Pocketart, a dance company from the Czech Republic, specialises in dance with social commentary. In the film Folds of Touch, choreographer Johana Pockova looks at the pressures on the individual to conform, especially within a capitalist infrastructure. An older woman sits and dreams of her younger self, twirling in a tutu; dreams deferred. The company then turns to a row of young women in suits, dancing in an assembly line. Pocketart’s exploration of the yearning to live creatively is beautifully articulated.

In Radioactive Practice, choreographer Abby Zbikowski examines the tension between practice and performance. Staged in a series of venues, including a tennis court and an empty car park, Zbikowski’s company is filmed both rehearsing and performing challenging street dance techniques: they constantly move between the two states. The performers are audibly struggling for breath in practice; in performance, the camera pulls back, and we have the finished product – no clue given to their physical exertion. Zbikowski’s blend of soft and angular choreography plays on the idea of pushing a body to its limits.

Dance, at its most abstract, is explored by Rosemary Lee and Hugo Glendinning in their piece, Sentence. A dancer is filmed using innovative techniques that blur the lines between her movements: we have ghostly glimpses of shape and silhouette. The effect is beguiling: as her body positions blend into each other, the dancer is expressing several ideas at once. Sentence is ethereal, but at its core is a reference to Eadweard Muybridge’s early photography, capturing the essence of movement.

One of the highlights of the programme is an opportunity to revisit Lea Anderson’s 2010 piece on the artist Egon Schiele. The Featherstonehaughs Draw on the Sketchbooks of Egon Schiele is an ambitious and highly successful recreation of the figures within Schiele’s artwork. Anderson’s choreography brilliantly evokes the disquiet, the creepiness of Schiele’s imagined world. The dancers hunch and slump into attitudes of ennui and longing. Wearing suits designed by Sandy Powell, the dancers are covered in daubs of paint, and their make-up, smeared across the face, extends this effect. It is as if they have just walked off Schiele’s page. Anderson’s choice to gel Schiele with contemporary dance is inspired, and as the dancers pair off in search of intimacy beyond society’s boundaries, the piece feels just as relevant today.

In these bold swathes of creativity, there is a thread of social conscience running throughout, and by building a programme that looks at the political and cultural issues impacting the arts, Dance Umbrella centres itself within that discussion. While dance itself continues to evolve, there is a recognition that progress cannot be assumed.

Dance Umbrella Festival runs at various venues and online until 31 October 2024