Ballroom and street mash-up at the Roundhouse

Posted on July 16, 2015

On Wednesday, August 12, at 8pm, Tommy Franzén, ZooNation Youth Company, Roundhouse Street Circus Collective and established ballroom dancers will perform a mash-up of ballroom and street dance at the Roundhouse in a brand new commission especially created and choreographed for Utopia by Arlene Phillips.

The commission will bring together dancers of all generations in an evening that also features new work by artist Alison Jackson created especially for Utopia and Roundhouse 2015 Poetry Slam winner and runner up Caleb Oluwfemi and Toby Champion.

Bloomberg Summer at the Roundhouse, the annual festival dedicated to introducing new audiences to innovative culture, opens on August 4 with Utopia, a major new installation by Penny Woolcock in collaboration with Block9!

Alongside the installation, the Roundhouse presents two evenings of dance, circus, cabaret and spoken word as part of Utopia Live Lates, a series of evening events that will be based around a different provocation and theme from the installation.

In addition to the event on August 12, circus director Paul Evans will premiere a brand new piece, Don’t Mention The F Word, on August 6. For more on Utopia, click here. 

Nicola Rayner

Nicola Rayner was editor of Dance Today from 2010 to 2015. She has written for a number of publications including The Guardian, The Independent and Time Out Buenos Aires, where she cut her teeth as a dance journalist working on the tango section. Today she continues to dance everything from ballroom to breakdance, with varying degrees of success. Her debut novel, The Girl Before You, is out in May 2019.