“The big noise here is the UK premie`re of Israeli choreographer Itzik Galili’s Sombrisa (co-commissioned by Newcastle Theatre Royal and Sadler’s Wells), a cunning piece of shadowplay in which all the dancers wear boxing gloves.
Weaving in and out of Yaron Abulafia’s chiaroscuro lighting patterns the dancers move in fluid formations, entering from darkness and disappearing like ghosts to the looped percussion of Steve Reich’s Drumming Part 1. In sharp contrast Kenneth Kvarnstrom’s colourful Carmen?! is an irreverent deconstruction of Merimee’s classic with seven men playing all the roles from bullfighters to cigar factory girls. Fast, funny and furious it is a poke in the eye of Latin machismo delivered with a cheeky grin.”
