Directors: Ephrat Asherie and Michelle Dorrance
The Center Will Not Hold at Sadler’s Wells announces the arrival of this production from The Dorrance Dance Company with a frenetic energy that leaves its audience breathless. Not so much a rollercoaster as a top speed theme park tour, this hour-long show, born out of a tiny four-minute fragment four years ago, erupts onto the stage with vitality and exuberance.
Created and directed by Ephrat Asherie and Michelle Dorrance, the piece expands a short duet into a full ensemble work, bringing together performers steeped in a dizzying array of styles: house, breaking, hip hop, tap dance, Chicago footwork, Detroit jit, litefeet and Memphis jookin. There is undoubtedly formidable skill on display here, with rapid shifts between solos, duets and larger ensemble pieces, often comprising improvised work. The result has an immediacy and a relentless power that connects the work strongly to its roots in street dance.
Central to the success of the piece is the original score composed by Donovan Dorrance. He uses a large musical canvas but also, thankfully, an economic sonic palette to create cohesion where there could so easily be chaos. The ideas flow, merge and develop seamlessly and are compellingly complemented by live percussion from John Angeles. His onstage presence illuminates proceedings, creating a physical link between sound and motion as well as a palpable energy and a thrilling sense of risk.
The merging of recorded music with live, of musician movement with dance, gives this work a rare brilliance. In short, the music is a triumph all of its own. The choreography embraces the music closely, though the tendency in street dance towards the showmanship of solo work breaks down the synchronicity at times, creating a sense of a stage full of soloists rather than a single company.
Visually, the production is spare but effective. Overhead lighting by Kathy Kaufmann carves the stage into shifting zones, at times creating the illusion of dancers appearing and vanishing within confined spaces. These “light traps” lend a sculptural quality to the movement, framing bodies in motion and heightening the drama.
Yet the variety of dance languages that make the piece so exciting also begins to work against it. The rapid succession of choreographic ideas that make the evening so exciting also severely limits opportunities for deeper exploration. Exposition is favoured over development. Sequences are too quickly abandoned, replaced by new ideas or styles presented in a similarly fleeting manner. Some ensemble work seems less curated than it should be, and vital performances risk being lost in the noise. Greater discipline in developing ideas and a more rigorous filter would endow the work with greater depth.
That said, the abundance of fresh ideas, sheer technical virtuosity and the brilliance of the musical collaboration ensure an evening of pulse-racing thrills that signal a bold and promising start for this company.
Runs until 18 April 2026
