It’s a big night. Not just the opening of a show, but the launch of a new venue. A 550-seater theatre for dance in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, part of a cultural quarter alongside a new outpost of the V&A and BBC studios. It’s a beautiful space that hopes to bring new audiences to dance, and as befits the occasion, this opening show is a party.
Inspired by her own epiphany on a New York dancefloor, Vicki Igbokwe-Ozoagu’s Our Mighty Groove is set in a club, with all the mini dramas of a night out. The show has appeared in a few different iterations since 2013, but this is a bigger reinvention with an expanded cast. We’re introduced to the characters of the club, the selfie-obsessed influencer, the “mother” of the house, the nervous first-timer, the friendly security guy. It’s all very likable, readable and broadly comedic, and the dancers surge with energy, drawing on breaking, waacking, house and vogue, locked into the beat.
Igbokwe-Ozoagu captures the club’s own ecosystem, the friendships, the egos, the self-expression, the possibility for reinvention; a few hours where life’s colours are turned up. It doesn’t go deep, doesn’t build character or drama beyond the surface, but maybe that’s not the point of a good night out. The point is what happens after the lengthy 40-minute interval when the auditorium is reconfigured, seats retracted, so that when we next enter we’re in the club ourselves, crowding around a giant podium and being encouraged into a tentative two-step. (Important: put your winter coat in the cloakroom if you want to feel free.)
Your enjoyment of this show might depend on how much you’re in the mood for a boogie, especially at the end when there’s a half hour after-party where you can take to the podium yourself – the superb funk/disco/house/African-influenced soundtrack, by Ghanaian composer Kweku Aacht and British producer Warren “Flamin Beatz” Morgan-Humphreys is designed to get your body moving. Not entirely successful as a piece of theatre perhaps, but a fun, consummately feelgood show that’s a great night out and a great celebration of this welcome new venue.
