Last Updated on June 25, 2026
A Varied and Engaging Mixed Bill
4.0 out of 5.0 starsFunny, clever, engaging and thoroughly entertaining – Interplay, Phoenix Dance Theatre’s new mixed bill, brought a breath of metaphorical fresh air from its Leeds home to London’s Sadler’s Wells East (which, it’s only fair to point out, is itself delightfully air-conditioned).
A mixed bill of works by international choreographers, Interplay consists of two short and two longer, heftier pieces, all conveying very different approaches to dancing, and all anchored on the company’s complement of eight remarkable dancers.
Next of Kin, choreographed by company director Marcus Jarrell Willis, comes first. It was created in 2013 for dancers of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, of which he was a member, and has now been restaged for Phoenix. Set to an extract from a Bach Violin Sonata, this seven-minute piece explores the joy of friendship between two people who understand each other perfectly.
Obeying Bach’s baroque rhythms, they jostle and challenge each other, express mutual admiration for acrobatic feats, their jerky gestures, sometimes endearing, sometimes comical, often exaggerated, owing a lot to silent cinema. Dorna Ashory and Dylan Springer made Next of Kin very much their own, Ashory in particular drawing the eye with her strong stage presence and uncanny connection with the audience.
Why Are People Clapping?! is a strikingly clever piece, created by dancer/choreographer Ed Myhill for his home troupe, the National Dance Company Wales, which has toured it extensively, and restaged for Phoenix Dance Theatre by Camille Giraudeau. Clapping is rhythm, and rhythm can be found anywhere, from the single clap with which the first dancer we see mimes catching a loudly buzzing insect, to the hits on a tennis ball during a match, energetically mimed here by two dancers minus ball or rackets, to the applause that greets a point won.
Or it can be found in American minimalist composer Steve Reich’s ‘Clapping Music’, which provides the soundtrack for this piece and is marked by the five strong cast, either in unison, or accompanying each other’s brief shows of individual bravado.
It amounts to 13 totally absorbing minutes, the dancers’ rhythmic clapping never flagging, until they’re given a moment’s respite when a recording of Steve Reich’s own ‘Clapping Music’ replaces live clapping.
The mood changes radically with Small Talk, by Pett Clausen-Knight, the choreographic duo, with whom followers of Ballet Nights have become very familiar.
In a domestic setting, denoted by a floor lamp, a chair and a large rug, two people grapple with the knowledge that their relationship is over, even if their connection is not.
With Pett Clausen-Knight’s characteristically physical choreographic language, Hannah McGlashon and Aaron Chaplin, tremendously expressive dancers both, go through the attract/repel dance of two bodies that know each other intimately, animated by two souls that no longer connect. And yet…
He lifts her sometimes tenderly, more often in exasperation, as she leans on him only to pull away. The props symbolise the trajectory of their relationship: a rug that keeps being ruffled and straightened out, a chair in which neither is allowed to rest for long, a lamp which they switch on and off in a battle of wills. I engaged with every single one of its 25 emotion-laden minutes.
After the interval, there comes yet another change of mood. Suite Release, by Marcus Jarrell Willis and Yusha-Marie Sorzano, is a vibrant homage to street dance, to community dance halls, to the sheer vibrancy of dancing as a collective endeavour. Drawing from hip hop and house cultures and danced to a medley of music that ranges from an American spiritual to relentlessly up to the moment beats, this is a piece for the entire company, showing them as much at ease with the demands of street dance as with the formal movement of their contemporary dance training
At first, I wasn’t entirely sure whether a narrative would develop, so kept waiting for the piece to go somewhere; but once I realised it was simply staying in the moment, I was able to abandon myself to the sheer enjoyment of that exuberant and very skilful dance. All in all, a delightful evening in the theatre.
Phoenix Dance Theatre, Interplay is at Sadler’s Wells East 24 – 27 June at 7.30 pm
Dr.: 75 mins inc one interval. Tickets: £15 – £45
Sadler’s Wells East
Stratford Walk
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
London E20 2AR
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