Dance Nation is a celebration of our bodies, our sexualities, and of the desire to achieve – particularly sitting in a woman’s body. This is what the company has been fascinated by – how women take up space; how saying aloud that wanting to be successful needs to exist loudly on our stages for women – because, for the most part, we are not allowed to be as direct, brash or honest about our demands and desires.
Clare Barron puts this centre stage for us, and we’ve gone for it. It’s been exciting to watch the company explore and develop as they build in confidence in their own bodies and voices. This is very much a play about how much we can put our bodies through, and how resilient we can be.
It is also about sisterhood and allyship and how that fits into our ambition and desire. It’s about growing up into women. There are moments of such joy and such heartache; it is a visceral re-imagining of our own upbringings within it.
This is a riot of a show, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we have, creating it for you.
Director, Lucy Curtis