Review: Our Mighty Groove at London’s Sadler’s Wells East – the 3★ show opens a 5★ theatre

Dance routinely divides the dance critics, but never in the manner of this inaugural production at Sadler’s Wells East, the second half being a totally immersive performance in which most of the 550 audience members participated enthusiastically. A small sedate minority – including the corps of the critics – sat on two short rows of plastic chairs watching from above, while some of their colleagues – and not just the younger ones – shimmied away in the crowd and on a central platform. It’s the first time I have reviewed a show in which several critics danced. No names, no pack drill. What happens in Sadler’s Wells East, stays in Sadler’s Wells East! 

The opening of a brand-new dance house for East London is unquestionably the event of the season in the capital’s dance calendar. And it is a worthy five-star venue, standing in the shadow of the 2012 Olympic Stadium (now the home of “the Irons”, aka West Ham United Football Club) and next to Zaha Hadid’s extraordinary Aquatics Centre. Frankly it’s everything that the original Sadler’s Wells is not with welcoming public areas that have sufficient seating for its audience, and – yes, it is really true – good food at a decent price in The Well and Park Kitchen. There are excellent sight lines from every seat in a heavily raked auditorium. Some logistical problems remain to be sorted, including conducting a bag search as people were about to enter the auditorium, which was inevitably rushed and therefore cursory (so what’s the point) but still created long queues to get into the theatre and delayed the start, a problem easily remedied.

The choice of show for the opening of the new theatre was especially symbolic for many reasons. It showcased the work of an excellent local choreographer and was danced by a small cohort of professional dancers from Igbokwe-Ozoagu’s company, Uchenna Dance, bolstered by a larger number of performers selected through community engagement in east London, followed by that immersive engagement of the public. 

A 40-minute interval separated the opening half-hour in the traditional performer/audience relationship (there is no curtain or proscenium to represent a fourth wall) and that second half-hour of immersiveness, with the non-public performers on raised platforms. This transition with an interval lasting longer than both acts was necessary to demonstrate the capacity for all seats to be retracted and open up the theatre, as well as providing a unique opportunity in a Sadler’s Wells context to buy and eat food. 

It’s hard to review a show that combined professional and amateur dancers plus the audience as performers but I will say that the dividing line between the seven professionals of Uchenna Dance and their dozen or so community companions was so razor-thin that it was often impossible to tell the difference and the group dance sequences in the first act were tightly coordinated.

The scenario for the first act (sparsely designed by Simon Kenny) was the Club Groove hotspot where a small succession of regular local celebrities came through the nightclub doors to perform their party pieces, each entrance punctuated by Cache Thake’s security guard in a clutch of cameo dances. Iona Brie was the first bold and vivacious vogueing celeb guest, known as Blue; bespectacled Angelika Napierała brought a touch of cool elegance to her waacking style; and the last to arrive, Shanelle Clemenson played the club legend Bougetta, wearing a crimson sequined costume covered by ropes of pearls, topped off by a pearl skull-cap (the piece de resistance in Jodie-Simone Howe’s costume designs).    

Our Mighty Groove has been on the move since it first premiered in the Lilian Baylis Studio (Sadler’s Wells’ smallest venue) in 2013, and Igbokwe-Ozoagu has returned to the Olympic Park where she was a mass movement choreographer for the 2012 Games. Her choreography is a rich mix of many styles, including impressive vogueing, new vogueing and waacking as well as more generic hip-hop styles, which were impressively delivered by Dani Harris-Waters and Bertie Jeffrey (a final year student at London Contemporary Dance School).

The music – by Kweku Aacht and Warren “Flamin Beatz” Morgan-Humphreys – was an impressive bespoke mix of catchy sounds (its originality evidenced by the fact that my Shazam app didn’t recognise anything) that kept up a strong House beat without being too pigeon-holed.

Congratulations to Sir Alistair Spalding and everyone concerned at Sadler’s Wells for a tremendous, permanent addition to the London dance scene, which has been a decade in the planning and making. The opening show was clearly a statement of welcoming and immersive intent, strongly focused on the local community.

Sadler’s Wells East

Graham Watts

Graham Watts is a freelance writer and dance critic. He writes for The Spectator, Tanz, Shinshokan Dance Magazine (Japan), Ballet Magazine (Romania), BachTrack and the Hong Kong International Arts Festival and has previously written for the Sunday Express, Dancing Times, Dance Europe, DanceTabs, London Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival and Pointe magazine (USA).  He has also written the biography of Daria Klimentová (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and contributed chapters about the work of Akram Khan to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet and on Shobana Jeyasingh for the third edition of Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers.

He is Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards and regularly lectures on dance writing and criticism at The Royal Academy of Dance, The Place and (until the war) for Balletristic in Kyiv.  He was a nominee for the Dance Writing Award in the 2018 One Dance UK Awards and was appointed OBE in 2008.