The Place, Resolution 2019 Preview

Resolution is pot luck. For a whole month at the beginning of every year for the past 30 years, The Place, London’s foremost stage for contemporary dance, opens its doors to very young, very hungry, very adventurous would-be choreographers.

If you’re very lucky you’ll catch work by the new Wayne McGregor. Yes, the man who is now one of the trendiest choreographers around, whose loyal following amounts to a brand new, young, celebrity speckled audience, started his career as a hopeful unknown at Resolution.

If you’re not so lucky, you may hit upon something that either takes you well away from your comfort zone, or is actually bad enough to send you screaming into the night.

Still, that’s the point of such a festival – to create a space where experimentation is not only possible, but positively desirable.

Here's an introduction to some of the 81 artists who'll be presenting their work at Resolution 2019:

– Continuing the current love affair between dance and technology, the hip hop ensemble Wayward Thread presents Proxy, which combines an infrared camera with dance theatre to explore how technology is becoming part of human nature (15 Jan).

– Also ploughing the technological furrow is circus duo Ben & Fred’s The Juggling of Science, which, we’re told, is a ‘fun science lecture’ (29 Jan).

The spectrum of Resolution 2019 is wide indeed.

– Another theme currently pushing to the forefront of dance is the exploration of gender, and this is what post-graduate dance student Jay Yule decided to concentrate on in her work Viva La Vulva, billed as a celebration of female and non-binary sexuality. Probably not for the faint-hearted... (22 Jan).

There are narrative works, such as Christopher Thomas Dance’s Blood is Thicker than Water, and purely abstract dance, eg Company Concentric’s duet for contemporary piano and dance, Play On (23 Jan).

On past experience, some works will be portentously earnest, others light and funny. Some will hit the mark, others miss completely. However, with three diverse pieces per programme, Resolution 2019 at The Place is bound to provide something amply to reward your curiosity and spirit of adventure.

So, we say, why not give it a go? Full programme here