Phoenix rising

Phoenix Dance Theatre is ‘25 years young’, as a filmed documentary shown halfway through last Thursday’s performance reminded us. The notion of youth is a relative one, particularly in the performing-arts world, where a quarter of a century is often regarded as a respectable old age, synonymous with a well-established reputation, a sound history and, arguably, a string of successes. Indeed, 25 years down the line, Phoenix remains a vibrant dance company that thrives on the collaboration with cutting-edge performance-makers. I was not surprised, therefore, to attend a programme, intriguingly entitled Stories in Red, that encompassed a wide variety of styles, techniques and forms; after all, artistic eclecticism has long been one of the company’s distinctive traits.

The new programme, which is already on tour, kicks off with Arthur Pita’s Snow White in Black a theatre-dance work revolving around a post-modern reading of the old fairy tale. The influence of Matthew Bourne, with whom Pita has worked, is detectable in the intertextual approach to the storyline.