Dance: All for one and one for all

National Youth Dance Company
Wall
by Oona Doherty
dancers Aleesha Moyo, Anya Rakshit, Aoibh Ryan, Ayuna Berbidaeva, Charly Knights, Daisy Bilsland, Ernie Shorten, Francis Henry, Frank Thorpe, Fue Akama, Georgia Coulson, Gilbert Dicks, Jacob Lincoln, James Airey, Kitty Newton, Lina Kasasa, Luis Green, Luke Pele, Matthew Atkinson, Meeri Niva, Megan Chaytor Wilson, Megan Georges, Monét Brooks, Morgan Heimsot, Otis De Ville Morel, Phoebe Mufushwa, Rosa Boadle-Soumah, Roselynn Gumbo, Rowan Williams, Ruben Morais, Venus Shury, Wray Maxwell-Mulligan
music Mark Leckey, Luca Truffarelli, Shamos
costumes Ryan Dawson Laight • lighting John Gunning
Sadler's Wells, London • 13.Jul.24 ★★★★

Rippling with youthful energy and passion, the talented National Youth Dance Company is on a national tour this summer with their show Wall, which made its London debut at Sadler's Wells. It's a fascinating, visually stunning hour-long piece that continually provokes thought as it explores ideas relating to community and culture. Created in a series of workshops with 32 dancers aged 16-25 from 21 cities, it's a conversation that reflects different backgrounds, touching on common feelings shared by teens across generations. And Oona Doherty's choreography vividly offers these performers a chance to demonstrate their skills, tenacity and resilience.

The show emerges around verbatim recordings, music and spoken word art that are reflected on a video screen above the stage, white lettering sometimes vibrating on a black screen, plus a stunning moment of bright whiteness. The words include music lyrics and vox pop clips in which people share honest views about what it means to live as a young person in Britain. As ideas of national identity swirl around, many of the comments touch on immigration, from opinions about refugees to first-person comments about how it feels to live in a country other than the one you were born in.

While these words and sounds engage our brains, the dancers perform hugely expressive movements, both as a large group and in individual break-out solos. Movements are repetitive, sometimes almost painfully so, and often heart-stopping in the way they show this widely varied group of performances interconnect and support each other. With open emotionality, they are telling their own stories, both collectively and individually, through words and dance. So the performances feel almost startlingly intimate, energised from within as dancers cycle through fluid movements, whether huddled together, in a line or going against the grain.

The stage is wide open, without any curtains or set aside from the video screen hanging above the dancers' heads. Coming from the sides and accented by spots, the lighting cleverly isolates performers in the blackness, highlighted by the blues and golds in their streetwear-style costumes. With a range of physicalities, each individual performer is able to shine within the group, with standout moments like a gorgeous solo by Ayuna Berbidaeva, a wheelchair user from Siberia, and a staggering section in which the dancers fall and stand up again nearly 100 times. And it ends with a triumphant party, sending us into the street with hope for the future.

For details on the tour, which runs until 29th July:
NATIONAL YOUTH DANCE COMPANY >

photos by Manuel Vason • 13.Jul.24