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Dance by Design review – Bauhaus cool, Congolese dandies and Catalan cygnets

Greenwich Peninsula, London
Abseiling on pointe, snazzy suits and spinning geometry were eye-catching openers for the Greenwich and Docklands festival

There’s a reason we normally trap audiences in dark theatres. There’s so much to distract the attention at outdoor dance events: the weather, the people milling about, here, the backdrop of shiny new buildings and cable cars over the Thames. But the performances in Dance by Design, part of the opening weekend of Greenwich and Docklands international festival, in London, all have ways of cutting through the noise.

The three fantastical figures of The Lost Opera are clearly inspired by Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet, their bulbous monochrome bodies made of spheres and cones. But these characters have speakers built into their costumes, so sound is emitted from bell-like sleeves and swings in and out of our auditory orbit as they move and spin. It’s pretty cool.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/38nIBLm
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