The Rose Interntaional Dance Prize: An Untitled Love (Kyle Abraham) and Sepia (Stav Struz Boutrous)

Sadler’s Wells, London
January 29, 2025

The Rose International Dance Prize is described as a new biennial prize for new dance creations in any style, created by established choreographers. The definition of ‘new’ is clearly being stretched given that the opening work, Kyle Abrham’s An Untitled Love, is over three years old, having been premiered in Chicago by his own A.I.M company back in September 2021. It’s not even new to the UK, having been presented at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2022.

An Untitled Love is a wonderful piece, however. A celebration of love in black American culture, Abrahams is quoted as saying that he wated to honour his parents, and wider family, through the work.

Tamisha A Guy, here with Claude (CJ) Johnson, in An Untitled Love
Photo Christopher Duggan

Set to the highly evocative music of neo-soul, multi-award-winning R&B artist D’Angelo and The Vanguard, it is a flowing, sensuous piece, shot throughout with sexuality, which is always appropriate, never overstepping the mark. There’s also a great deal of humour, not lost on the audience.

The cast of ten are excellent, technically, and emotionally. They capture the emotion in the music, choreography, filling the stage for over an hour, their comings and goings weaving stories of love won and lost. Leading the way was Tamisha A. Guy, making her final performance with A.I.M after eleven years with the company.

Donovan Reed in An Untitled Love
Photo Jassy Earl

An Untitled Love yet again shows Abrahams to be a choreographer of considerable skill and originality, who can imbue his work with a range of feelings, and enable dancers to recreate those feelings on stage. It was a super start and a is certainly a worthy nominee for the Rose Prize.

A second section of the Rose International Dance Prize, the Bloom category is for emerging choreographers with a maximum of ten years’ experience.

In the next-door Lilian Baylis Studio Theatre, first up was Sepia, a 30-minute solo piece based on a Georgian male folk dance that tells the story of a female hunter, also first seen in 2021. Choreographer Stav Struz Boutrous performed the piece exquisitely.

Stav Struz Boutrous in Sepia
Photo Efrat Mazor

She has reshaped the dance to work for a solo female, mixing the traditional Georgian with contemporary dance. The result is riveting. The story of the hunt unfolds before your eyes, and with virtually no props, or scenery. The creature being hunted was brought to life so vividly through Boutrous’ sensory dancing, that you could ‘see the animal’ and almost smell it as well.

Sepia allowed Boutrous to showcase her considerable talent, her dance expertise, and her chorographic abilities. Some of the piece is danced in silence, but some to music composed by Boutrous together with partner Adi Boutrous. It was another great start and another worthy contender for the prize.

The Rose International Dance Prize competition runs to February 8, with an award ceremony taking place after the final performance. The winners will be decided by a jury consisting of Professor Christopher Bannerman; musician PJ Harvey; writer, dance producer and curator Karthika Naïr; choreographer and TV judge Dame Arlene Phillips; and fashion designer and artist Dr Samuel Ross. A prize of £40,000 will be awarded to the Rose category winner with £15,000 going to the Bloom Prize winner. In total, four Rose category productions and three Bloom category productions have been shortlisted, with representatives hailing from Taiwan, France, Brazil, USA, Israel, Portugal and Greece.