De Nada Dance Theatre: Ham & Passion, Birmingham
After setting up DeNada Dance Theatre in 2012, Spanish choreographer Carlos Pons Guerra fast-forwarded his way to a National Dance awards nomination in the best emerging artist category last year with this kitsch, glamorous and perverse evening of dance. Collectively titled Ham & Passion, the three works featured address the troubled history of religious sexual and political oppression in Spain, setting up a violent, playful opposition to Franco’s fascists and the Catholic church. Guerra’s pieces (Passionaria, Young Man! and O Maria) are peopled with a murderous drag artist, a vengefully bored housewife, the Virgin Mary herself and a side of the eponymous cured ham.
Terra, London
Hubert Essakow completes his elemental trilogy (water, fire and earth) with Terra, a work exploring man’s relationship with the structure and layers of the earth. Working with a commissioned text by Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri, Essakow’s highly physical, imagistic style plays with the twin ideas of earth as both a refuge and a shifting, precarious force. The music will be by French film composer and jazz musician Jean Michel-Bernard, with design from Belgian artists Sofie Lachaert and Luc d’Hanis. Essakow is still relatively unknown, but has a special skill for crafting elegant yet immersive dance theatre.
