In 1981, Phoenix Dance Company was a group of three men in Leeds, using their administrator’s spare room as an office. In 2022, it’s a fixture of the UK dance scene, with its own building and a 40-year legacy being celebrated in this tour. So much has changed in that time, from a black, all-male company inspired by jazz and soul and the dance they learned together at middle school, to a multicultural, international troupe of male and female dancers. There have been multiple directors and shifts in tone, and more than once the company has seemingly risen from the ashes.
There’s nothing from the earliest years in this programme curated by the current director, Dane Hurst; the focus is on the 90s and 00s. We get the composure and controlled angles of Henri Oguike’s Signal, and intertwining family relationships and split leaps from the sofa in Danial Shapiro and Joanie Smith’s Family. Jane Dudley’s Harmonica Breakdown is a three-minute gem, originally created in 1938 (mounted by Phoenix in 2008), a brief but heavy howl of a woman challenged by circumstance: proud, pained, determined, Yuma Sylla dancing with great purpose.
