My day at The Place

The day that Tavaziva Dance performed at ‘The Place’ was a busy one and an important show as it was their London premiere and the press were present. Everybody both from the company and The Place worked extremely hard to make this day a success.

I arrived at The Place on the morning of Tuesday 8^th March and was told to go to the sixth floor to the back entrance of the auditorium. I entered a pitch black room feeling my way around to find the seats and seeing just a chair in the middle of the stage it felt quite eerie. All was soon to be revealed when Antony our lighting designer cued the technician from The Place and the chair was awash with colour, I realised that I had stepped into the technical preparations of the lights for Double Take.

                               (Antony our lighting manager)

The dancers arrived in the auditorium at 11am to start warming up for their class before tech rehearsal, which I took part in; we were also joined by three of London Contemporary Dance School’s third year students. The class was fast paced and energetic, thoroughly warming up the dancers for the day ahead. The class included exercises for stretching, a section of rep from Double Take as well as Bawren’s contemporary sequences infused with African steps and beats.

Next was the technical walk through, when the dancers had to go through all the positions for the piece and Antony stopped and started them at different points to make changes or repeat certain sections, and microphone problems with Tsungai the singer were sorted out. The dancers then had their technical rehearsal which was photographed so they had to be in full costume, it astounds me how they can go so quickly from the walk through to doing the piece full and performing all the relevant intentions behind each section.

At about 4pm, 48 children from local schools (who had attended workshops with the dancers to create curtain raisers for the show) arrived and filed into the studio next to the auditorium to warm up and practice; ready for their tech rehearsal. The pieces were varied but equally as excellent, they kept true to the repertoire and emotions of Double Take, with one even including live drumming from the students.

After the schools’ tech rehearsals there was just a little time for me to set up my table by the entrance of The Place before the audience started arriving. I really enjoyed being at the front of the house, talking to the audience and getting them to sign up to the mailing list, unfortunately a lot of people weren’t able to get tickets as the show had sold out the day before. For those people and everyone else out there, remember that we have two other London performances at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre this coming Friday 18^th and Saturday 19^th March at 7.30pm (nearest tube: Seven Sisters on the Victoria line) book your tickets on: 020 8365 5450 or online at www.berniegrantcentre.co.uk.

The show was exceptional; it seems to change every time I see it and the dancer’s energy was higher than it had ever been before, they seem to explode onto the stage with passion and energy. After the show numerous audience members relocated to the café downstairs where there was a talk led by Lucy Field. Many of them were itching to ask Bawren and the dancer’s questions about the piece, the creative process and the work in general. There was a general consensus that the evening was a huge success and the company felt that they had achieved something great, whilst also knowing that the hard work isn’t over yet, as the tour still has five tour dates left!

Double Take received two great reviews in The Times and The Stage, I will publish these in my next post.