Here’s the good news. Dance in London is getting stronger and stronger all the time and I hope it keeps growing and evolving. One Giant Leap is a dance performance choreographed by Ashley Morrow that’s themed around the idea of outer and inner space and our own journey though it. Ashley takes the spoken word of famous scientists and thinkers and lays them over music that give her dance company the canvas to play on.

As a complete piece this is very strong choreography and performance. Her full company pieces are great and the company moves like one living, breathing, ensemble, This is important in a corps de ballet ( whole company piece) because you never want your eye ripped to a single member, but rather to see the whole of the movement through the whole of the company. The solo pieces were strong and the trio was not bad. The pax de duex was one of the best moments of this excellent work with the dancers filling their roles with strength, thoughtfulness, and tension – well choreographed and well danced. The opening and closing pieces encapsulated the theme of the show that launched us and brought us home. This is important because thoughtful choreography finds rhythms in the movement that repeat and bring us back in an ongoing theme and variation.

You can see the influences in the choreographers work with nods to La La Human Steps and even some old school Martha Graham, but Ms. Morrow is not a copier -her work is her own. Couple of bits though that I think do need some thinking about. Because there are 88 keys on a piano doesn’t mean you have to use them all at the same time and all as fast as possible. Good music, like good dance, gives us the space and time to pause and understand a little deeper what we’re experiencing.. Some of the work was frenetic with out being able to understanding the justification that led to the tempo. Sometime space and breath in a movement needs to be slowed downs we can follow you and go a little deeper.

But despite my small criticism, and it is small in this wonderful show, we are fortunate to have a choreographer of this talent in London, and with a company that can stay with her. They deliver her ideas with the beauty and grace that is the human form in dance. Please go see this show.

Sean Quigley

Reviewing for Theatre in London