After 11 seasons, Cloud Dance Festival’s reputation and calibre of artists still continues to outdo itself. Inviting many returning artists and a few recognisable names, this season of the Festival, Entitled Hush, may sadly be the last for some time as the ever-dedicated Cloud Dance Festival team, led by pioneering director Chantal Guevara, take a well-earned rest.
Taking a break to enjoy a well earned rest, Festival founder Chantal Guevara, brought Hush, Cloud Dance’s last choreographic platform for a while, to its first residency at the Cochrane Theatre in Holborn, central London.
Cloud Dance Festival opened its doors to Hush last night, its eleventh Festival to date and the first evening of the three night festival commencing Friday 16th July. Staged at the Cochrane Theatre in the central location of Holborn, the festival provided an intimate and friendly location as a platform for both emerging and established innovative and creative choreographers and dancers to perform their work. The evening saw a welcome return of many dance companies to the festival, with an eclectic and diverse night of some seven performances, the first night of the festival did not disappoint!
Thrice yearly, Cloud Dance Festival seeks to bring contemporary dance to the masses with a weekend-long showcase of up and coming choreographers from across the UK on a diverse yet intimate and easily digestible scale. As a testament to how well the festival nurtures its participants, the second evening of Hush featured five returning companies amongst the seven pieces on offer. Programme notes for most could have come straight out of a psychologists’ notebook: domestic abuse, immigrant displacement, apocalypse theory, mutiny and betrayal, and spiritual apathy were all stated sources of inspiration. With such strong conceptual aims this could have easily turned into a chaotic evening for dance, but luckily the tremendous skill and interpretive sensitivity of the performers and choreographers ensured it was anything but.