In the programme notes he describes his relationship with ballet as ‘complicated’. He was thrown out of ballet school more than once before finally returning to complete his training. But while this time in his life could be considered a ‘car crash’ to some, it is something for which he is now grateful. For although a ‘square peg in a round hole’ it was here that he began to create work, telling stories without words, and finding a new space that sits as a combination of dance, music and theatre.

He created MÁM in 2019 when it was nominated for an Olivier Award after enjoying sellout performances at Sadler’s Wells and has performed at festivals worldwide. However, this 9-date tour for Dance Consortium is the first time regional UK audiences have had the chance to see it.

The inspiration from the show comes from the landscapes, myths and people of Kerry on the southwest coast of Ireland. It is also infused with the music of the region. Concertina player Cormac Begley takes centre stage throughout and part-way through the piece a curtain falls to reveal Stargaze, a European classical contemporary collective, playing live.

The show opens with Cormac, wearing a ram’s head mask, sat facing a young girl on a huge wooden table. Shortly after there are some disorienting lights and the company’s 12 dancers appear all dressed in black as if at a funeral also wearing frightening masks.

Set in what looks like a community hall, this scene is a strange mix of the otherworldly and the familiar. If science-fiction dance is a thing, this could be it.

It is an intense and sometimes uncomfortable watch as the child is shouted at, or squashed between adults partying, smoking, watching TV – generally dancing to their own beat. Many of the moves give the appearance that the audience could join in, giving an immersive sense that we are watching real people in these dancer’s characters.

Each time we think we know what is happening, Sabine Dargent’s set design strips layers back to reveal something new, leading to the final scene where giant fans blow the audience away in every sense of the word.

The lights go up to huge cheers and a spontaneous standing ovation. It certainly isn’t the easiest of watches but the Lowry audience absolutely loved it.

Dance Consortium presents MÁM is at Lowry, Salford on 3 and 4 February 2026 before continuing on its 9 date tour.

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Motionhouse is known for bringing its unique fusion of dance and circus to large-scale, bespoke entertainment. You might have seen them perform at festivals or at major events such as the opening show of Birmingham 2022 Festival or the National Lottery’s Big Eurovision Welcome event in Liverpool.

This new show, created for an indoor theatre space, has the same big-event feel, placing their performers in a space which combines multiple moving objects, fast-paced film projection and an absorbing soundscape.

The show, created by Finnan together with the company’s associate director Daniel Massarella and the dancers, is an artistic and physical response to society’s increasing polarisation and the crises populations face globally from natural disasters like wildfires and floods.

As Finnan explains in the programme notes: ‘The best of humanity is when we put the needs of others before our own’ and this forms the narrative arc for the show as the dancers follow a path from isolated darkness, eventually working together towards the light.

Act One ‘Decent into Darkness’ opens onto a frenetic, fast-moving world where dancers move around a blur of faces among London streets, transport, buildings and rooftops.

Simon Dormon’s fluid set sees the city projected onto a main backdrop and two 3D triangular wedge shapes which the dancers move and weave between taking us from a gamer’s bedroom to a city park to the rush of the Underground. The result feels like watching a series of video shorts, almost like dance for a Tik Tok generation.

There is so much to see that it is hard to believe they are creating this with only 7 dancers, who are such a phenomenal ensemble that they all deserve mention – Olly Bell, Llewelyn Brown, Dylan Davies, Alex Macnab, Blair Moore, Sophie O’Leary and Beth Pattison.

The circus skills come to the fore as the set moves to a series of geometric shapes, where two dancers battle to free themselves from a prison of plastic wrapping. This aspect feels unlike anything I’ve seen before.

Act Two ‘Finding the Light’ follows a clearer narrative. There is a much calmer feel to it, although the dancing and circus skills on display are no less impressive. Here the two triangles are transformed into a 4m high, 45-degree ramp which becomes a metaphor for the heights dancers need to scale to reach the light. They can only do this together in what becomes an emotionally moving scene of strength and trust.

We are left with a feeling of amazement at how these young dancers trust that they will be caught when they fall; trust the strength of the dancer on whose shoulders they stand, and trust as they form a human ladder that those who scale it are not going to lean on a part of their body to cause pain. It is an incredible spectacle of community, support and courage that leaves us with a feeling of hope in humanity. In what feels like an increasingly divided world Motionhouse has given us something wonderful.

Motionhouse Hidden was at Lowry, Salford on 30 January 2026 before continuing on tour.

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When Bourne first announced The Red Shoes, tickets sold-out before its premiere season opened, such was the anticipation for this new work. The show toured again in 2019, but the run was sadly cut short by the 2020 Covid lockdowns. So, this tour feels landmark not just for its decade-long anniversary, but also for the excitement of seeing the production as if for the first time with Ashley Shaw, Dominic North, and Andy Monaghan reprising the principal roles they originated in 2016.

Those unfamiliar with the ballet will likely have some recollection of the story from the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale and Academy award-winning 1948 film starring Moira Shearer. Both versions won legions of fans and Bourne more than nods to this legacy in the cinematic scale of Lez Brotherston’s design, the telling of the fairy tale as a ballet within the ballet, and the nostalgic, post-war setting.

From the opening scene there is a sense of immersion into another world with a proscenium arch drawing us into a silent-movie theatre screen. The arch later revolves to switch the action seamlessly from onstage to backstage, home to theatre. While the ever-surprising set takes us on a journey through a range of other locations from real-world Monte Carlo and Covent Garden to more dream-like black and white sequences reminiscent of Wizard of Oz.

In terms of following a story, the main thread is a simple one – dancer with Ballet Lermontov, Victoria Page (Ashley Shaw) is given red ballet shoes from its impresario Boris Lermontov (Andy Monaghan) who urges her to forgo everything in pursuit of becoming the greatest dancer in the world. Meanwhile her heart is torn when she falls for composer, Julian Craster (Dominic North). The shoes have a life of their own creating an obsessive pull between art and life that eventually dance her to her death. Sound melodramatic? It is. And made all the more so by Terry Davies dramatic score featuring early music of Hollywood composer, Bernard Herrmann, best known for his work on Hitchcock films.

Fans of the film and children’s tale will no doubt be mesmerised by the story all over again, because Bourne has taken all the best bits and injected what the other art forms couldn’t – the real passion of live dance. And what a celebration of dance it is, with so many different styles on show from traditional en-pointe ballet to athletic contemporary split leaps; ballroom to a comical Egyptian walk.

In the programme notes Bourne describes The Red Shoes as ‘A personal love letter to a life spent in theatre and dance’ and that is exactly how it feels to watch. Open your heart and be swept away.

Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures The Red Shoes is at Lowry, Salford from 25 to 29 November 2025. Age Guidance 7+

New Adventures returns to Lowry in June 2026 with The Car Man.

Read our interview with Matthew Bourne.

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You won’t have slept through it, that’s for sure. It’s a relentless 90 minutes (without interval) of boundless energy and raucous sound.

The house lights are still up when a man in a novelty blue suit, clambers up onto the stage to peer behind the curtains. The house lights go down. The curtains open, the man is no longer alone. Half a dozen people dance. Blackout.

This first section is a series of vignettes, cut into by sudden blackouts – sometimes through lighting, sometimes through the adroit opening and closing of a series of curtains, hanging in three (possibly more) sets, each further upstage than the one before. The blackouts are abrupt and brief, and when the lights come up or the curtain is pulled aside, it is as if we enter a new scene – new positionings of dancers, new phases of movement.

The electronic score (composed by Hofesh Schechter) is brutal and often assaultingly loud. There are times when this all verges on too much, or when there is a sense of a particular section going on too long. More than once, my senses tell me, “Okay, I want this to stop now. I need some stillness, some quiet.” But Schechter and his troupe do not let us off lightly. There is mercy, but not quite when we need it.

Upstage, a topless dancer boldly gyrates and departs. Soon after, a naked man strides downstage and stares us all in the eye. It takes some nerve but then, as my Mum would have said, “he’s a fine figure of a man!” (The obverse of this moment features later; a nervous bashful male nude, clutching his bits and running for cover).

Black gives way to red and then to white. The lighting contrasts are very pronounced. Six dancers become twelve, and the wonder of Schechter’s choreography begins to be revealed.

There is so much action and interplay, dancers rushing in and out of formations and partnerships, constant change and flux – in other words, every opportunity for collision and disaster and yet here, not a hint of it. The coordination and timing is breathtaking.

A man in a red suit steps forward and announces through an old-style standing microphone:

“Welcome to your theatre of dreams.” And there was I thinking we’d been in it for the previous 30 or so minutes.

A trio of musicians (Yaron Engler, Sabio Janiak and James Keane) now assume the bulk of the accompaniment (though techno-synth will still play its part). The red-clad trio in the corner (stage left) with dream-distorted lyrics swelling out into the auditorium, remind me of Dean Stockwell in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

We are in a dream, so echoes of our cultural memories are to be expected: a tableau reminiscent of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, dance moves referencing Jerome Robbins (West Side Story), Michael Peters (“Thriller”), a nod to Pina Bausch, a wink to Fosse/Verdon. All of this seeps in almost subliminally – expert homages.

The music switches to a bossa nova, and we are commanded to get to our feet (most do). Soon, the dancers are out into the stalls inviting us to dance with them. (The invitations are charming not intimidating). I plead my writer’s cramp, but a fellow critic (far more established and esteemed than I) is up and boogieing. Fair play to him.

Then, at long last, a moment of stillness. The dancers gather back on stage to sit at the feet of the three musicians, who now strike up a traditional-style middle-eastern melody. Dancers are not suited to long periods of sitting still. Soon, one of their number is on her feet, urging the others to follow. The melody expands in tone and the volume swells and we are into the most joyous and visually rewarding section of the evening. It’s tempting to describe it as tightly choreographed chaos but, of course, nothing this adept and precise could truly be chaotic or even spontaneous. One can only imagine the grind and sweat and dedication these dancers put into rehearsals. It was worth the effort. This is quite tremendous contemporary dance.

The energy spirals ever upwards and it feels like a finale but, of course, it is not.

The movement slows and settles. A sad and touching song, “I Remember” (written and sung by Molly Drake, arranged and performed by Neil Catchpole), has already featured and now returns.

“When I had thought that we were we,
But we were you and me.”

And on this pensive, slightly melancholy note, we are finally done.

Cue rapturous cheers and a standing ovation.

An evening not without its challenges, but, oh, the rewards!

Hofesh Shechter – Theatre of Dreams is at Lowry, Salford on 24 and 25 October 2025.

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(LA)HORDE is a Paris-based collective of artists — Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Arthur Harel — who work across a variety of art forms and have served as artistic directors of the Ballet National de Marseille since 2019.

They describe their approach of using contemporary dance as a means of protest and connection as ‘post-internet dance,’ that is inclusive, political and uncompromisingly innovative. Bring Your Own, a programme of three pieces certainly fits into that vision.

The show opens with a new piece Hop(e)storm – with the emphasis on the hop. This is Lindy Hop, mixed with rave and created especially for the unbounded energy of the brilliant Rambert dancers. Watching it you can almost imagine yourself joining in. The kicking feet and low jumps appear easy moves. It’s how people feeling full of confidence on the dance floor think they look. In reality, this appearance of free and easy is so controlled and synchronised by the dancers it is amazing it is possible.

The strength and control of the dancers is pushed to the extreme in the remainder of the programme which features two restagings of (LA)Horde’s pieces Weather is Sweet and Room with a View.

Weather is Sweet is inspired by the LA club scene and invites questions about intimacy, consent and sex-positivity. This is the piece where you can see the 15+ age guidance is needed, with no holds barred approach to the sexual imagery on the stage. It doesn’t so much feel erotic as frenzied. At one point a dancer is pushing another dancer’s bottom down and from side to side as if playing basketball. We definitely need the interval break after that.

The final piece, A Room with a View leads with another highly charged emotion with the anger of injustice and protest coming to the fore.  The imagery is chaotic, with dancers fighting (punching and biting each other), while others raise a defiant middle finger to the crowd. Much of this is choreographed with extremes of motion either ultra slow motion or frenetic high speed, to an increasingly loud electronic score from RONE. At times it becomes almost hypnotic and again the control of the dancers is phenomenal.

The whole evening feels like a hymn to youth, on display in all its rawness and brilliance – wow!

Rambert X (LA)HORDE is at Lowry, Salford from 16-18 September 2025.

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Sadler’s Wells’ take on the 1979 film, based on The Who’s 1973 album, Quadrophenia, choreographed by Paul Roberts and directed by Rob Ashford, has a comfortable majority of us on our feet. By “us” I mean “them” (i.e. other members of the audience). For myself, I depart a veritable curate’s egg of a critic – thrilled in parts. Christopher Oram’s sets are compelling, Paul Smith’s costumes (assisted by Natalie Price) are stylish and evocative, Fabiana Piccioli’s lighting design is outstanding, and David McEwan’s sound design impeccable. And there are some captivating moments…kind of like gemstones thread upon a clumsily silver-plated chain.

Set in the early 1960s, this is the story of Jimmy, a working class lad trapped in a tedious production line job, with not much to go home to but a lonely, disillusioned mother who smokes too much, and a desperately unhappy father who smokes too much and drinks too much (we find out why, later). But this is an era where teens have money and can follow their own paths to self-destruction. Young lads have a choice between Mods – natty suits, parkas and scooters – and Rockers – leathers, long, slicked-back hair and motorcycles.

Attracted to a Mod girl and the Ace Face Mod “leader”, Jimmy’s path is decided. One early complication is that his old friend has elected to join the Rockers. One of the highlights of the evening is a charming pas de deux between Jimmy and this friend, performed on and around a park bench. We sense it will all end in tears… but not until act two.

The production opens very powerfully – a menacing, crashing sea behind Jimmy, who stands alone on a rocky outcrop. Four snappily dressed young men rise up and join him. The five of them sway like waves, before breaking into some impressively athletic choreography. Director Ashford tells us these are, “four facets of [Jimmy’s] personality, the TOUGH GUY; the LUNATIC; the ROMANTIC; and the HYPOCRITE.” (‘Quadrophenia,’ geddit?).

It’s an impactful opening, promising more than what follows is able to deliver. Some scenes are punchy and exhilarating, others seem set to dance the hind legs off a donkey (low on novelty, high on labouring the point).

Musically, it’s a good show, when perhaps it could be great. Rachel Fuller (with Martin Batchelar) has generally made a fine job of orchestrating the music. Early routines (by the sea) lean productively on Vaughan Williams and Elgar, while some later ones (most notably the friends’ pas de deux) nod effectively to Bernstein and Copland. What is lacking is the dramatic boost that the original lyrics and Roger Daltrey’s vocals could provide. This is nowhere more acute than with an otherwise moving interpretation of “Love Reign O’er Me.” How a few lines of those words, a few bars of that voice might have lifted the finale to another level.

A scene depicting the trauma suffered by Jimmy’s Dad in World War Two (where the dancers move without musical accompaniment) is only a tweak or two from moving audiences to tears. YeastCulture.org have immense fun sending Jimmy out of his brain on the (“5.15”) train to Brighton with brilliant video effects.

The clash between Mods and Rockers on Brighton beach is insufficiently raw and chaotic. Even I wasn’t frightened.

In a neat contemporary twist, Jimmy fantasises about a threesome with Mod Girl and Ace Face (until Dad walks in on him humping his pillow). Note to parents: always knock first.

Fans of the film will fondly recall a closing scene in which Jimmy pushes Ace’s Vespa off a cliff. This is not tonight’s finale. In fact, there is only one, very brief, appearance of an actual scooter. I’m not sure what the decent-sized gang of enthusiasts in the crowd will have made of that. Mods without Vespas, Rockers without Triumphs. I leave you to ponder that.

As it is, no spoilers, but the ending kind of spoils itself (if you see it, you’ll see what I’m getting at).

Paris Fitzpatrick earns his ovation as a lithe and charming Jimmy. Amaris Gillies is striking as DRUGS. It’s not clear from the programme who danced MOD GIRL tonight, which is a shame. She was exceptional.

This take on Quadrophenia could lose 20 minutes (and gain a Vespa or two) and be the better for it.

Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia, A Mod Ballet is at Lowry, Salford Quays from 16 to 19 July 2025.

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The company’s latest production the Midnight Bell, which premiered in 2021, comes to Salford for the first time as part of a UK tour. And while it might not have such an immediately well-known story, this show has all the emotion, spectacle and top quality dance fans of Bourne have come to expect.

The title is taken from one of Patrick Hamilton’s early novels, but this is not a straightforward adaptation. Instead, Bourne has taken inspiration from Hamilton’s wider body of work to create a piece that captures the essence of the 1930’s London captured in his writing.

In this respect, it doesn’t matter if you are familiar with Hamiliton’s work or not, because rather than retell one story Bourne chooses characters and scenarios from several novels and weaves them together with characters and scenarios of his own creation, into a series of vignettes linked by the Midnight Bell pub. Through these snapshots we are drawn into the relationships and dreams of the pub’s regulars and employees.

Credit here goes to the whole team, choreographer, designers and cast for an utterly absorbing experience that draws us into this world of 1930s Soho and Fitzrovia with its array of distinctly complex characters and relationships. Although there is no linear narrative the storytelling is captivating through its atmospheric evocation and detailed characterisations. Lez Brotherston’s sets fill the breadth and depth of the Lowry’s huge Lyric stage, switching scenes with a seamless filmic quality. Terry Davies musical score adds to the feel of silent movie nostaligia, including some songs from the 1930s, which the dancers mime to.

Here the cast are described as actor/dancers, and rightly so – this piece works because we both recognise and believe the situations being played out. The wide age range of characters allows scope for both the company’s most experienced dancers like Dominic North to perform alongside rising stars like Hannah Kremer – a real treat for audiences who have followed the company for years.

The themes of loneliness and search for connection that grew out of the Covid pandemic from which the production emerged still weigh heavy. But Dominic North tops and tails the evening with such lightness he provides the beer goggles to the bleakness of the romantic characterisations. And as the audience we have the best people watching seat in the bar, where it seems the search for love and connection in the 1930s was no less elusive than today, and certainly no less fascinating.

Matthew Bourne’s the Midnight Bell is at Lowry, Salford from 1-5 July 2025. Age guidance 14+

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This deconstructed and thematically enhanced version of the original ballet is an unflinching look at royalty, toxic repressions and the mental health crisis we currently face also seemed to have a nod.

The Prince is subject to constant shoves and pulls and dismissals, and we know it is only a matter of time before he will break, he longs for a world of freedom and thinks he has found it with his love interest, the delightful Girlfriend played by Bryony Wood. So, when he follows her into her real world, with its seedy dances (that are incredible) and mercenary necessities, that is the moment his last thread of hope in human nature ends.

Thanks to Bourne’s vision and that of set designer Lez Brotherston we are in constant pursuit of finding the Prince in each aesthetically elevated scene, as he is trampled and towed along. When he finds the Swan he is still an outsider but is cautiously led in and delights in the chance.

To watch live the magnificence of the Swans is really something all theatregoers should experience. Fierce, enticing and untamed they flex in unison, in moves that we can only imagine the significance of. And this is one of the most luring things in this production – we don’t know what their world is. We understand their ways, but it is exotic and something that the young repressed Prince longs to covet. When one Swan is curious of the Prince, then we feel something other-worldly is about to begin.

But Prince’s mental waters begin to get muddied and by the time he meets The Stranger at a party at the Palace, he cannot hold purchase on his emotions. He is enraged and tragedy ensues.

The whole ensemble is magnificent and locked together in this tale, giving us linear story, spectacle and magic.

It starts with humour, almost letting us gently dip our toe into the story and ends like a fever dream. You will never know who, if anyone, really cares for The Prince, or if his privilege and reality is so skewed that he cares only for himself. He lies finally on the white sheets of his giant bed, perhaps finally free.

I was reminded of when I was first married, me and my husband got a rib of beef for Sunday dinner, (years since we had beef now) and it was expensive but amazing. We said we always had to find the money for it, even at the sacrifice of other things. That’s how I felt about Swan Lake. I don’t want to see anything that isn’t so delicious ever again.

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is at Lowry, Salford from 21-30 November 2024.

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The fact this ambitious dance show is touring for the second time in as many years hopefully tells you otherwise. While some might say there were few better ways for the Rambert to fill seats, there certainly would have been easier ones.

Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby is Rambert’s biggest show in its near 100-year history and it feels epic in scale.

There’s always a challenge when bringing something new to the familiar, but fans can be reassured their favourite characters are in good hands with a story written by the original series creator, Steven Knight.

Set as a prequel to the BBC show – how Thomas Shelby and his brothers came to be the men we know – it opens in 1916 with graphic scenes of fighting in the trenches of the Somme. Rambert’s Artistic Director and choreographer Benoit Swan Pouffer holds nothing back from the audience, giving the action a filmic quality which moves at pace.

We’re taken from the horrors of war to the heady atmosphere of a 1920s nightclub, where Tommy (Conor Kerrigan) falls for singer Grace (Naya Lovell) and a tragic love-story begins.

Fans of the show will recognise central characters like Arthur (Dylan Tedaldi), Polly (Simone Damberg Würtz) and Ada (Adél Bálint), but even if you’ve never seen a single episode the essence of the story is easy to follow with the use of some explanatory narration voiced by the late poet, Benjamin Zephaniah, who played a street preacher in the TV show.

An immersive, contemporary score by Roman GianArthur played live on stage, provides an added layer driving the action. There are also recognisable songs from the Peaky soundtrack from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Radiohead and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. It’s not until the curtain call that we realise this rock gig sound has been created by only three musicians: Yarron Engler (drums, percussion, vocals), Joe Downward (Cello, bass, vocals) and Mitchell Emms (vocals, guitar, keys).

There is so much happening on stage at any one time that you can’t take it all in. But striking throughout is the strength and grace of Rambert’s talented dancers whose performances bring both emotional intensity and a highly stylised edge to this visual storytelling.

It’s a thrilling ride with carousel race horses, punk police dogs, gun weilding women, blazing buildings and centre of it all the iconic Thomas Shelby.

If you like Peaky Blinders – go. If you like Rambert – go. Or just go anyway – it’s a helluva spectacle.

Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby is at Lowry, Salford from 22 to 26 October 2024. Age recommendation 15+

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It starts with the rhythmic banging of a drum resembling a heartbeat as the dancers, huddled together pulse as one. From this life-force the dancers emerge as individuals, all appearing to do their own thing in a burst of energy and fluorescent-coloured costumes. It feels like we are watching a riotous street festival, complete with city soundscapes.

Choreographer Qudus Onikeku says his show aims to capture ‘the energy of Lagos, the vibrancy, the youthfulness, the craziness, the madness, the beauty, the ugliness’. The result feels like we have been thrust into a bustling centre which is almost an assault on the senses, leaving little space to bring our own emotions to the piece.

The rawness of the moves gives a new meaning to the term ‘dirty dancing’ as couples simulate sex on stage before a loud, screaming birth scene. Equally there are some violent outbursts, with a beaten man left writhing on the floor as others discard their clothing over him.

The show fuses Nigeria’s modern-day youthfulness with ancient philosophies of the Yoruba people. It is split into three parts representing the circle of life – birth, death and rebirth. Each section is marked visually with backstage projections, but they run simultaneously with no interval. As such, it is a challenge both for the 10-strong dance troupe and the audience to maintain the burst of energy experienced at the start. But perhaps these lulls are intentional as part of the ebb and flow of life.

Towards the end of the death scene, the energy lifts again with a moving spoken word section where a dancer recites old Yoruba proverbs while being smeared in a silvery, black body paint. The paint absorbs and reflects the stage lighting, creating some psychedelic effects.

Two live on-stage musicians, Simeon Promise Lawrence and Daniel Ifeanyi Anumudu create an absorbing sound-track and bring coherence to the whole piece. There is also a rounded feel to the choreography that returns at the end to the high energy with which it starts – the dancers moving so quickly their legs could be on vibration plates.

It could end here with uplifting exhuberance, but the finale is much quieter, almost inviting contemplation. As the dancers disappear towards the back of the stage there is finally space to absorb what we’ve just experienced – now it is the crowd’s turn to go wild. And they do.

Dance Consortium brings The QDance Company’s Re:INCARNATION to The Lowry, Salford on Tuesday 8 and Wednesday 9 October 2024.

Read our interview with choreographer Qudus Onikeku.

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