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China Tour of Henri Oguike Dance Company, UK
Performing Dates & Venues Price:
Henri Oguike Dance Company Founded in Autumn 1999, Henri Oguike Dance Company has rapidly established itself as a favourite among audiences and critics. It enters its seventh year with an exhilarating mix of works celebrating Oguike＊s intense musicality and driven choreography. Henri Oguike is passionate about the relationship between live music and dance. His work regularly features music and composers from diverse musical genres ranging from baroque to contemporary 每 recent works have featured compositions by Handel, Shostakovich, Steve Martland and Pedro Carneiro. The company tours extensively across the UK and abroad and it also delivers a comprehensive schedule of education/outreach projects. International engagements have taken the company to countries including Germany, France, Syria, Spain and Italy. Henri Oguke Dance Company has also performed at major festivals of both dance and music including the Sintra Festival (Portugal), Dance Europa (Israle), Holland Dance Festival and Monaco Dance Forum. In 2001, Henri Oguike Dance Company won the Time Out Live Award as ※Most Outstanding New Company§. Since then, the company has received two TMA nominations for ※Outstanding Achievement§ and further three nominations from the Critics Circle National Dance Awards. Awards 2004 Henri was nominated for a TMA Award for ※Outstanding Achievement in Dance for his ※fearless, accomplished repertory§. 2003 Henri was a finalist at the TMA Theatre Awards in the Outstanding Achievement in Dance Category. 2003 HODC was nominated for Outstanding Repertoire for the Critics Circle National Dance Awards. 2002 Henri was a finalist in the Best Choreography category in the Critics Circle National Dance Awards. 2001 Time Out Live awards for Most Outstanding New Company 1999 Robin Howard Foundation 1997 Jerwood Award 1997 Robin Howard Foundation 1996 Robin Howard Foundation Repertoire for China
Pulsating energy and thundering rhythms are the hallmark of Second Signal in which dancers go head-to-head with the on-stage drummers of leading taiko drumming group Taiko Meantime, twisting and coiling their bodies with furious energy.
A bright and animated piece set to, Steve Martland, one of the UK＊s leading composers＊ specially commissioned score, inspired by Blake＊s poem The Tyger. The plucked strings and springy lines of the score are reflected by the dancers＊ sinuous and feline movements in Tiger Dancing.
Oguike＊s signature piece, the searing and poignant Front Line unfolds against the vivid setting of Shostakovich＊s 9th Quartet, played live by the Pavao Quartet.
Set to the quietly beautiful Saharan blues of guitarist Ali Farka Toure, Expression Lines sees Oguike evoke the harsh contrasts of equatorial sand and sky in an intense yet reflective solo.
News Review ※What is so exhilarating about the choreographies of Henri Oguike is the rhythmic pulse which races through every phrase. Over the past twenty years Oguike has shown rare imagination in match movement to score 每 and his scores are streets ahead of the clatterings and sludgy sonorities that are the choice of too many dance creators today. A fine evening: fine dancers and fine dance in fine lighting. And fine music, too. 每 Financial Times, 2004 ※I can＊t think of a choreographer since Mark Morris who has shown such completeness of musical instincts, physical inventiveness, intellectual scale, emotional daring and capacity to entertain.§ 每 The Daily Telegraph, 2004 ※Henri Oguike has rightly been dubbed one of the most musical choreographers of his generation 每 but he has a very particular approach to his chosen scores. What we see is not so much a visualization of melody and pulse, but music as three-dimensional space, peopled by very specific types of men and women.§ - Guardian, 2004 ※Henri Oguike is a young choreographer, and he might be our next important one. His abstract dances are confident and clever, some sweet and funny, others immensely serious. All semaphore intelligence, with finely judged music and d谷cor, and a movement style entirely his own. - Evening Standard, 2004 ※Henri Oguike＊s Front Line is unquestionably one of the finest dance works to be created in this country during the past decade. Set to and driven by Shostakovich＊s String Quartet No. 9, this sextet from 2002 is both formally beautiful in its choreograph and ferocious in its presentation. - Dance Now, 2004 ※Henri Oguike has done a great deal since he graduated in the mid-1990s. The variety of his output is remarkable 每 from the tragic romantic narrative Dido & Aeneas (to Purcell) and the swirling patterns of Front Line (to Shostakovich), to the exploration of movement and light in FPS Part 1 (to the Kronos Quartet) and the fast-paced Finale (to Rene Aubry). It＊s too early to judge Oguike＊s place in dance history, but he is certainly a choreographer in constant motion.§ Henri Oguike Born in West Glamorgan to a Nigerian father and a Welsh mother, Henri Oguike studied music, drama and dance at Swansea College. Henri went to train at the London Contemporary Dance School and danced with 4D, its postgraduate performance group. Henri was a founder member and dancer with the Richard Alston Dance Company from 1994 - 1997. With an award from the Robin Howard Foundation, he created Amongst Shadows in 1996 and received the Jerwood Award for Young Choreographers in 1997. In 1999 he was commissioned by the Acarte Theatre, Lisbon to create Prime Origin and by Studio Theatre, London to create A Moment of Give, after which he founded Henri Oguike Dance Company. Independent commissions in 2000 included Seen of Angels for Companhia Portuguesa de Bailado Contemporaneo and Travel Matrix for the UK Rocks National Tour. In 2001, they included Casual Grace for Bare Bones Dance Company, of Death and Stillness for CPBC and La, La, La ＃ for the National Youth Dance Company. The following year saw Brightside for Transitions Dance Company, Broken Strings for Swindon National Youth F.P.S. (Frames per Second) for First Class Air Male＊s UK tour in conjunction with Dance East, Violet for the Curve Foundation and Butterfly Grid for LCDS. Commissions in 2003 included With My Sighs for West Glamorgan Youth Dance, Splinter for Laban graduates and two duets for Escapade on the South Bank. Henri was one of the chosen choreographers for the Jerwood Changing Stages Choreolab in July 2003 in Birmingham. In 2004 commissions included Signal for Phoenix Dance Theatre and Parade for London Contemporary Dance School. In the same year, Oguike was appointed Artistic Director of National Youth Dance Wales for whom he choreographed Spatial Signatures and most recently Working Lights in 2005. In Spring 2005, Seen of Angels, set to Handel＊s Messiah and Second Signal, a dramatic new collaboration with Taiko Meantime, London＊s foremost Taiko Drumming group, were premiered to critical acclaim and toured through the UK alongside White Space and Shot Flow. Another such extraordinary collaboration, this time with Britten Sinfonia saw the world premiere of two new works in May 2005 set in St. Edmundsbury Cathedral; Tiger Dancing set to a score by contemporary composer Steve Martland and the other, to Tippett＊s Concerto for Double String Orchestra in celebration of his centenary. A month later, Henri was invited to Israel to conduct a series of masterclasses at the Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem. Recently, he received a commission from the Holland Dance Festival to choreograph a work as part of the Wisselwerk Project. Henri has taught extensively in the UK and abroad and both he and his company have been the recipients of many prestigious awards. Most recently he was nominated for the Critics Circle National Awards for ※Outstanding Repertoire§.
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