Choreographers: Kristina and Sadé Alleyne
Second stop on a tour that runs until July, National Youth Dance Company / Alleyne Dance: Memory Keepers comes to Sadler’s Wells for one night only, a collaborative examination of memory as experienced through the body co-devised with its 31-strong company of exciting young performers combining contemporary, classic, hip hop and even hints of American country. The National Youth Dance Company has successfully collaborated with a range of companies in the past and, notwithstanding the exemplary performances, this patchy show fails to clearly convey its purpose.
Choreographed by Kristina and Sadé Alleyne to music composed by Giuliano Mordarelli, there are flashes of inspiration here, starting well with a single figure taking deep breaths before experiencing the shuddering effects of memory that ripple through his body as they do through Emanuele Salamanca’s backcloth design and through time. When a second dancer joins the first and is infected with this shaking physicality, Memory Keepers feels like it’s on to something, and what unfolds could be a meaningful exploration of batons passing between generations or the ways in which memory is simultaneously an individual and collective experience.
However, what follows is never that articulate about the meaning of a show that is delivered in reasonably disconnected chapters led by soloists and groups of different configurations. The company move as a pack, building walls, long chains of people dragging themselves forward or spread across the stage in separated patterns. Occasionally, a memorable figure appears: a young man reluctantly playing a drum, another dancing with a flute before eventually performing live as his colleagues swirl around him. Sometimes the dancers are free, at others they appear pushed or pulled by external forces, they pose, hold their heads in despair, and reluctantly perform ritualistic activities, but Memory Keepers never forms a coherent whole.
There are anchor points throughout, with the dancers frequently coming back together, crowded around one individual, blocking them in and reaching out their hands either in worship or to detain them. Yet the Alleynes never clarify the tangible link in their show between the different sections, between memory as a burden, an inheritance that restricts us and the pleasure of personal recollections. Characters in the show play tag with the concept, pushing memory through their bodies and sharing it with others, but the audience remains on the outside of meaning, making its seemingly unstructured 70 minutes feel very long indeed: not helped by Salvatore Scollo’s moody lighting that follows so many current shows in assuming an arty visual but making it difficult to peer through the endless gloom to really see the movement.
Nevertheless, the National Youth Dance Company are excellent throughout; a huge performance encompassing lots of different styles delivered with skill and stamina by these talented dancers whose enthusiasm is infectious even if the memories are a bit misty.
Reviewed on l 30 May 2026 and continues to tour
