This sprawlingly ambitious dance show certainly delivers atmosphere. Forty years ago, the Chatham dockyard shut up shop, ending over 400 years of building ships for trade, exploration and empire. When industry slinks out, heritage marches in – now it’s the Historic Dockyard Chatham, a museum of maritime endeavour. Under cover but open to the elements, it makes an epic space for an epic story.
Icon Theatre is based in Medway and director Nancy Hirst builds a story of the dockyards and the town they dominated, of British seafaring and the empire it enabled. That’s a big ask in 85 minutes. On a wide traverse stage, with audience and video on all sides, dancers from ZooNation (hip hop) and Amina Khayyam Dance Company (kathak) embody these mighty themes, with a huge community choir and loads of youngsters.
