Dance Umbrella, London
Dominating the first week of Emma Gladstone’s debut programme as artistic director of Umbrella is Bosque Adora (Barbican, EC2, Thu to 18 Oct), a new work from Rocio Molina portraying the animal instinct beneath our urban exteriors. Later comes Ivan Blackstock’s hip-hop dance show, A Harlem Dream (Young Vic, SE1, 20-31 Oct), inspired by the late 1920s and 30s when black artists converged in a burst of cultural defiance. Elsewhere, there’s Jérôme Bel’s work for Theater Hora (Shaw Theatre, NW1, Tue & Wed), and Barcelona’s La Veronal performs a quixotic art history (Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, 30 Oct) that references everything from Titian’s The Venus Of Urbino to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.
Various venues, to 31 Oct
Dance Live, Aberdeen
This always enterprising Scottish festival hits a new high, bagging a brand-new work by Mark Morris. Words (His Majesty’s Theatre, 28 Oct, pictured) will be performed in a mixed bill that includes the marvellous Ivor Cutler-inspired A Wooden Tree and the darkly romantic duet Jenn And Spencer. Elsewhere, from the Van Huynh company comes Gesundheit! (Woodend Barn, Banchory, Thu), a fusion of dance, music and spoken text; the indomitable Liz Aggiss looks back at her dance career from the vantage point of being 60 (The Lemon Tree, Fri); and another fine veteran, David Hughes, puts together a triple bill of works which includes a piece set to a soundtrack of Kylie Minogue (The Lemon Tree, 18 Oct).
Various venues, to 28 Oct
