Over the last 19 years Leeds-based Phoenix has led the way for black British dance. But like its fabulous namesake, the company has self-ignited and risen from the flames in several incarnations.
In the beginning there was the all-male line-up. Then came Phoenix Plus, with women brought in to enrich the mix. Home-grown dancers have come and gone recently and now Phoenix is preening its plumage with performers from Finland, Russia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Jamaica.
This retrospective show, 19: Rewind & Come Again, gets its title from the Jamaican dance-hall slang for encore. It features dance bites from eight of the company's best-loved works, plus three new offerings, intercut with sharp video collagesfrom film-maker Jenson Grant and words from writers Tyrone Huggins and Sol B River.
Action comes thick and fast, dashing down memory lane with Bebe Miller's witty urban slant on the Highland fling, Spartan Reels (1992), spanking fresh and full of girl-power attitude, contrasting hugely with Pamela Johnson's elegant human architecture in Subject of the City (1991), a construction site of difficult balances and inverted bodies demanding great control and timing. Other old friends included Shapiro and Smith's hysterical romp Family (1992), with its wild acrobatics centred on a big yellow armchair. We have canoodling teenagers torpedoing wildly over it, and an insomniac Hugh Davis - the remaining Leeds dancer - desperately trying to get comfortable in it, edgily hunching, stretching and defying gravity.
The three new pieces created by artistic director Thea Nerissa Barnes and choreographer Andile Sotiya illustrate the inherent Phoenix vocabulary: Jamaican club moves, jazz and modern expressionism.
Hot to trot and fired up with catcalls, three couples show out in Brawta, Jamaican slang for a little extra. We're down at the dance-hall and it's a free-for-all as they let rip to the rap. This funky battle for dance supremacy is full of loose gyrations and peacock struts, each contender slipping on a black coat before they go for it. Raw and fun, it captures what early Phoenix was all about.
Barnes recalls the 1940s with snoods and soft-shoe shuffle in Key Club, a homage to the company's jazz heritage. The six dancers cut a rug with swinging jive and nifty footwork to the hopping sounds of Frisco Frog. In contrast, the horror of lynchings in the deep South is all too evident in Strange Fruit, a powerful solo for Sotiya, danced to Nina Simone's harrowing version of the song.
Gary Lambert's duet, Longevity (1990), was especially poignant in the hands of Tiia Ourila and Bawren Tavaziva. As the words of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" oration punch out, they dance seamlessly, free at last.
