CriticalDance Forum

Photo: Richard Stocks

TOM RODEN & PETE SHENTON / NEW ART CLUB (UK)
Slide Show

Tue 8 November, 8pm
The Place: Robin Howard Dance Theatre
020 7387 0031
Tickets £15 (£10* to members of the Dance Umbrella Supporters’ Scheme
All tickets include entry to after show party.

*Tickets only available from Dance Umbrella Office: 020 8741 4040

Like most choroegraphers, Tom and Pete, whilst waiting for the terpsichorean muse to strike, like to sit in their ivory tower and watch their favourite TV shows (DIY plastic surgery Nightmares, I’m a Fat Celebrity Watch Me Jog and Britain's Top 100 Numbers). However, since hearing how good Dance Umbrella was going to be this year they've decided to break the habit of a lifetime and actually go out to the theatre to see some dance.

In fact they are going to see the whole lot. Every turn, every skip, every arthritis-inducing lift. They are going to try to get into every party and have a question answered at every post-show discussion. They want to be there to witness every choreographer's tantrum. They will read all the publicity and all the reviews and every article in every Sunday paper. They will trek across the capital night after night with nothing but an A to Z, a copy of Time Out, a camera and a desire to see the very best in the world of dance.

And at the end of it all they will present a dance comedy show based on the experience - a diary of the days and nights of the hardiest festival go-ers under the Umbrella.

Time Out and Dance Umbrella have received an investment from Arts & Business New Partners to develop a creative partnership with New Art Club.

Slide Show
By Debra Craine for The Times

This wasn’t really a show. It was a farewell to Dance Umbrella 2005, the extraordinary festival that has had Londoners buzzing through an orgy of contemporary dance for the past seven weeks.

For the final Umbrella performance, Tom Roden and Pete Shenton (who call themselves New Art Club) gave us Slide Show, a wryly comic pièce d’occasion based on their experience of going to see everything (or almost everything) presented in Dance Umbrella 2005.

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Slide Show
By Luke Jennings for The Observer

New Art Club are Tom Roden and Pete Shenton, who are to contemporary dance what David Baddiel and Frank Skinner are to football: laddish, train-spotterish, loopily inspired. Their one-night production, Slide Show, marks the close of the Dance Umbrella 2005 festival, and offers up a celebration of its highlights, both real and imagined.

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