Phoenix Dance Theatre

35th Anniversary Gala

Northern Ballet Centre, Leeds

Wednesday 28th September 2016

Back in the 1970s Nadine Senior, a visionary teacher at Harehills middle School in Leeds began to transform the lives of hundreds of her young charges in one of the most economically deprived but artistically fertile areas of the inner city. Nadine used the communicative power of dance to inspire her students to express themselves as "individuals". In 1981, three of her former students led by David (Leo) Hamilton formed themselves into Phoenix Dance Company. Hamilton became the company's founder artistic director and the company rapidly earned national, and later, international acclaim.

Nadine Senior's enduring legacy was uppermost in the minds of the company and an enthusiastic audience in the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre at Northern Ballet and Phoenix Dance Theatre's gleaming new building. An entertaining programme devised by current Phoenix director Sharon Watson included an excerpt from Darshan Singh Buller's refreshingly funny choreography for Mapping. Buller, a former artistic director of Phoenix is yet another celebrated alumnus of Harehills Middle. Next, the youngsters of the Phoenix Dance Academy showcased their skills in The Mob, choreographed by Carman Vazquez Marfil, Natalie Alleston and Marie Astrid Mence. Nightlife at the Flamingo - an early Phoenix success - was premiered at Leeds Civic Theatre in 1983 by the original troupe of five black all male dancers: Leo Hamilton, Donald Edwards, Vilmore James, Merville Jones and Edward Lynch. Lynch has re-choreographed the piece for this Gala using not five, but forty dancers comprised of Phoenix members past and present including both Edwards and Lynch himself, plus the junior and senior Academies. This dazzlingly brilliant piece fuses Jazz, Soul, and Reggae with explosively physicality and wistful interludes to capture the atmosphere of a 1940s American dance hall. The audience cheered and roared with delight.

Geoffrey Mogridge