Beyond the window box

Posted on September 3, 2012

Sweetshop Revolution’s new show Tree, at London’s artsdepot on September 15, promises to look beyond the city into woodland and wilderness – all washed down with mugs of cider for the audience.

Directed by Sally Marie, who has danced regularly with Protein Dance and with Duckie, Tilted Productions, H2 and Jasmin Vardimon, Sweetshop Revolution has a quirky and hospitable approach to dance theatre, feeding fairy cakes to the audience in past shows.

Tree takes four men on a tour of an invisible woodland. Kyle is a city boy stuck in the woods on community service; Colin, a nature-loving vegan, nevertheless has a fondness for barbecued chaffinch; Rex is a modern day shamanic force with a love of disco, while Sorrel falls down through the layers of himself and his family tree. The show looks at “inside” and “outside” selves, environments, wilderness and wildness. It’s a promenade performance, with complimentary mugs of cider offered to the audience during the course of the show.

For tickets and more information, call artsdept on 020 8369 5454 or click here

Tree also plays at BAC in South London from September 6 to 8. Click here for more details

Photograph: Stephen Berkeley-White.

Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray is editor of Dancing Times. He studied at The Royal Ballet School, Leicester Polytechnic, and Wimbledon School of Art where he graduated with a BA Hons in Theatre Design. For 16 years he was a member of the curatorial department of the Theatre Museum, London, assisting on a number of dance-related exhibitions, and helping with the recreation of original designs for a number of The Royal Ballet’s productions including Danses concertantes, Daphnis and Chloë, and The Sleeping Beauty. He has also contributed to the Financial Times, written programme articles for The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, and is co-author of the book Unleashing Britain: Theatre gets real 1955-64, published in 2005.