It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!

London’s Studio Centres

Jazz Dance Company

Theatre Severn

16/June/2015

Whether you love dance or had never explored it as a medium before , this is a show with everything.

Presented by The London Studio Centre’s Jazz Dance Company they proved they certainly know how to move. The dancers were all final year student of the London Studio Centre, having all just studied BA(hons) and other qualifications in Dance.

  The show comprised thrill after thrill as the dancers explored genres of dance as broad as one could have ever wished for. From 1920’s flapper dancing through to the new and hyperactive street dancing this company just kept on getting it right.

When one realises that the stable of choreographers lines up like the who’s who of choreographers, it's obvious this show should be something just a little different. The audience were not disappointed as was proved with the claps whistles and cheers as the all too short show closed.

It was, interestingly enough, a mostly female cast with just two male dancers. However this gave Arnau Galindo Alises a very lot to do and was he deployed considerably more than his other male counterpart Tashan Taylor. Both of them were brilliant and proved dance is a genderless medium and shouldn’t  be kept as the preserve of the girls.

That said, there was such beauty and elegance in the movements, a fluidity that seem to whisper on the breeze of the music and so many of the  pieces felt just so peaceful, graceful and feminine. Except of course the modernity of the street dance, which was no surprise given the choreographer’s connection with the X-Factor.

From Bob Fosse to the Fred and Ginger it was all in there, tied together with the theme of the Silver Screen.

The use of space was breath-taking and when the stage was full of pirouetting dancers careering around at break neck speeds one ismade aware of the dancer’s own sense of space; and as a result one gladly witnesses no collisions.

On a technical note the stage might have been better rigged to catch the sound of tap shoes as it was only when the whole troupe were on stage tapping did the actual tap sound break through the music.

The very opening piece of the show suffered a lighting shortage at times and the effect of the white of the costume flashing in the darkness was spectacular but perhaps the lighting man might have been little kinder and afforded them slightly more light . At one stage it was dark enough to have had one thinking the dancers may have changed their minds and gone home.

However, this is a great show and a fantastic advert for the courses on offer at the Studio. It is a stunning celebration of Dance and an amazing showcase for one extremely talented troupe. If I had taken a sack to collect up all the missed steps I would have gone home with it empty, there were none!

loveshrewsbury.com wishes all participants a lucky and enjoyable career. As anyone who has been involved in an artistic degree knows; that last show breaks your heart as you say farewell to the people who have been your family for so many years. But wow, what a way to say farewell!

This is a four star review.

Owen J.Lewis