The Place, London
January 10, 2026
Across the evening, each work investigates the combination of different art forms as a means of shaping a personal artistic language. Holding this relationship is not easy: when it is carefully sustained, meaning sharpens; when it loosens, the artist’s intention becomes harder to read.
Humble Power, Quiet Might, choreographed and performed by Maya Inniss, is presented as an interdisciplinary work weaving contemporary movement, poetry and visual art, exploring self-emergence through the lens of a female artist of colour. Rather than announcing this narrative overtly, the work unfolds as a long, measured trajectory across the stage.
From the outset, the choreography establishes distance, drawing the performer from a far upstage corner toward the opposite downstage edge. The diagonal pathway is sustained, then mirrored in reverse at the close, creating a sense of a journey that is both physical and internal. The performance unfolds through improvisation, allowing the performer to articulate emotion in the moment rather than follow a fixed sequence.
Movement, poetry and visual elements are brought together with restraint, rather than simply layered on top of one another. Contemporary movement remains grounded, allowing stillness, breath and gaze to carry as much weight as gesture. The body occupies space with quiet insistence, shaping an atmosphere of resilience that feels earned rather than declared. Improvisation and mark-making operate not as embellishment but as extensions of presence. Interdisciplinary practice here functions as expansion, opening space for individuality and strength to emerge without being overstated.
Photo Jemima Yong
Supermarket Shenanigans, directed by Ty Burrows and performed by Carys Belle Thomas, Noor Darwish and Amelia McCulloch, places three dancers in fluid rotation across multiple roles. Structured as a sequence of episodic scenes that echo the rhythm of a television sketch show, the work presents a series of supermarket encounters: collisions in narrow aisles, misplaced items, fleeting personalities that appear and disappear without warning. Characters dip in and out of focus, their presence defined as much by timing as by costume and gesture.
Where Humble Power, Quiet Might is inward-facing, Supermarket Shenanigans turns unapologetically outward. Comedy is its driving force, and the audience response is immediate and sustained. Laughter ripples through the space, accompanied by applause that signals anticipation as much as appreciation. Costume changes arrive unexpectedly, sharpening character shifts and adding momentum. The work’s success depends on the diversity of its performers, without which its texture and tone would not hold.
Movement here carries clear semantic weight, drawing on recognisable, everyday gestures that remain immediately legible. The choreography brings together dance with theatrical and comic structures in a way that remains coherent and assured. The two forms operate in mutual support, each clarifying rather than overshadowing the work’s thematic focus. Making an audience laugh through movement is no small achievement, and Supermarket Shenanigans succeeds by understanding exactly what it is doing; and doing it well.
Photo Jemima Yong
The final work, Where What Never Was, shifts again in tone. Choreographed and performed as a solo by Aurora Casatori, dressed in black, the piece offers an abstract meditation on memory, absence and imagined pasts. Sound designed by Seirian Griffiths enters not as accompaniment but as an atmospheric presence, moving alongside the body. It and movement trace a fragile line between presence and disappearance, where what is remembered, what is longed for, and what never fully existed begin to blur.
The movement reflects a distinct personal creative style, shaped by training across multiple dance forms. Rather than narrating memory, the choreography allows it to surface through suggestion: gestures arrive without explanation, linger briefly, then dissolve. By avoiding gendered markers, the costuming preserves the performer’s expressive range rather than narrowing it, redirecting attention away from fixed identity and toward sensation.
Meaning disperses rather than resolves. The work opens space for projection, inviting the audience to bring their own associations to what unfolds. Moments form and fade, echoing the way memory itself operates; never fully held, always partial. This abstraction may create distance for some viewers, but it also allows the work’s concerns to resonate beyond the limits of the programme notes, extending into a more personal and uncertain terrain.
The evening reflects a broader tendency within contemporary performance toward cross-disciplinary practice. Yet the works also reveal the demands such approaches place on the artist. Interdisciplinary requires fluency, not accumulation. On this night, the most compelling moments came where artists trusted their chosen language fully, whether that language was quiet movement, theatrical comedy, or abstraction, and allowed it to speak without excess.
Resolution 26 continues at The Place to February 24, 2026.