The Chair

Source: The List (Issue 635)
Date: 3 August 2009
Written by: Kirstin Innes

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This article is from 2009.

Over the past couple of years, Zoo Venue has got increasingly good at giving opportunities not only to the most interesting international dance companies, but exciting younger companies from the UK. In that slot this year is C-12 Dance Company, still-recent graduates who have been making collaborative contemporary dance in London since 2005, with their show The Chair.

‘It’s contemporary dance with a narrative, which I realise is a contradiction in terms,’ laughs the show’s co-director, Adam Towndrow. ‘I come from a more theatrical background though, so it’s important to me that there should be a narrative element that the audience can grasp while they’re taking in some excellent dance.’

The eponymous item of furniture has obvious connotations of capital punishment, and according to Towndrow they’ll be exploiting that and other references within their piece, the central theme of which is memory and forgiveness. ‘The chair is used as a metaphor for death,’ he explains. ‘But it’s also used within the family home as well as inside a prison.’

The Zoo, 662 6892, 9–31 Aug, 6.35pm, £10 (£7). Previews 7–8 Aug, £7.

This article is from 2009.

More: Dance, Adam Towndrow, C-12 Dance Company, Contemporary dance, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh Festivals, Fringe, Previews, The Chair