UNITED KINGDOM: CONTEMPORARY CHOREOGRAPHER LEA ANDERSON'S DANCE COMPANIES PERFORM BERLIN CABARET INSPIRED SHOW "SMITHEREENS"

Record ID: 389113

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: CONTEMPORARY CHOREOGRAPHER LEA ANDERSON'S DANCE COMPANIES PERFORM BERLIN CABARET INSPIRED SHOW "SMITHEREENS"
  • Date: 13th April 2000
  • Summary: (REUTERS) (PERFORMANCE CLEARANCES REQUIRED) VARIOUS SHOTS OF SMITHEREENS BEING PERFORMED
  • Embargoed: 28th April 2000 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVADTIBO8RUYOV2NMKXGAAW6ZFU4
  • Story Text: Contemporary choreographer Lea Anderson's two
    companies, the all-female Cholmondeleys and the all-male
    Featherstonehaughs have teamed up to perform in London in a
    Berlin cabaret inspired show entitled Smithereens.

    The Cholmondeleys (pronounced Chumleys) and The
    Featherstonehaughs (pron.Fanshaws) are well known for their
    quirky, innovative style, courtesy of choreographer Lea
    Anderson.Their current show premiered in London last autumn
    and now the two companies, who usually perform separately, are
    back to perform Smithereens again.To a musical accompaniment
    by The Victims of Death, the dancers present a dazzling array
    of bizarre images, which, as dancer Rem Lee explains, come
    from a wide range of sources,
    "The starting point was cabaret from the 1930's.It
    draws on Dadaist images, surrealist images, so obviously it
    draws on a lot of fine art and a lot of performance art from
    that period, but also Lea has got a very eclectic source for
    all of these things, she loves anything visual really so that
    can come from film, from photographs of models in magazines
    like Vogue, anything that's got a strong figurative design
    element to it.Whether it's costume, or the shape of the body,
    she'll take all of these sources and she's put them onto our
    bodies."
    Anderson's interest in all things visual goes right back
    to her days as an art student at the renowned St.Martins
    School of Art.After finding the constraints of her chosen
    medium too restrictive, she nurtured her interest in
    performing art by going to the Laban Centre to train as a
    choreographer.

    On leaving college, she formed the Cholmondeleys and
    many of the company's early works were performed cabaret
    style, sharing the bill with stand up comedians, or performing
    between bands, in crowded pub venues.And it is back to
    cabaret she has returned for Smithereens, " The idea of
    cutting and pasting images from many many different sources is
    fundamental to this show, but she tries to do it all with a
    homage to that period, and to that decadence and the
    over-the-topness of that period, all the travesty and the
    darkness of the times, she alludes to a lot of that as well,
    with the music and the lighting is very dark."
    The design of Smithereens plays a vital part in the
    carnival of the grotesque that the dancers create.The
    costumes were the work of Shakespeare in Love designer Sandy
    Powell and allow a blurring of gender with masks, false
    breasts, and wigs.The performers form endless, faceless
    chorus lines, transform into temperamental ballroom dancers,
    disjointed ballerinas, manic lounge lizards, distraught
    four-armed divas to name just a few of the images that fly
    around the stage - the whirlwind of dark scenes that bombard
    the audience make for uneasy, but interesting viewing.
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