The Place, London
February 7, 2026
From maternal memory to queer ecology to shimmering abstraction, this Resolution 26 evening unfolded as a series of immersive worlds.
When the audience entered, a Room Dance Company dancer was already there in the Room. A monumental red-thread installation, stretched across the space as if it had always belonged to it. It felt as though we had stepped into something already in motion; a private ritual mid-breath.
Room approaches birth through the lens of motherhood, shaping the work around a strong, enveloping atmosphere. Thick red threads form a womb-like environment: enclosed, protective, intense and slightly overwhelming. The red colour saturates the eye, evoking blood, inheritance and lineage. The image of a red dress passed from mother to daughter runs quietly beneath the surface, grounding the installation in something intimate and recognisable.
Photo Jemima Yong
The choreography by Gloria (Xintian) Zhao and Xinyi Du reflects pulses, contractions, moments of suspension. The dancer fully drawing into the installation and performing within it. The red threads push back, frame space and hold emotional weight. Birth here is not simply biological. It becomes cyclical; a return to the first room we ever occupied.
At times, the lighting design felt insufficiently considered. A strong beam from upstage shone directly at the audience disrupting the visual field, weakening the otherwise carefully constructed atmosphere.
Choreographed by Kirstin Halliday and co-created with Aniela Piasecka, Desert Grassland Whiptail Lizards: Act 1 opens in near stillness. Two dancers lie low at the back corner of the stage, almost unnoticed. Slowly, they begin to crawl forward. The entrance is patient and deliberate, establishing a reptilian physicality before any overt explanation is given.
Inspired by the all-female species of lizard in New Mexico that reproduces without fertilisation, the piece constructs an all-lesbian fantasy ecology. Video projection and documentary-style narration frame the biological facts, while the choreography reimagines them through absurdist humour and embodiment.
The movement vocabulary is spare but exact. Sudden head flicks, low gliding locomotion, subtle mounting gestures, each spare and precise. This restraint gives the work focus. Through minimal physical material, it opens questions about reproduction, desire and how lesbian bodies are framed by a gaze.
The costume and design, by Sgàire Wood, are especially effective. The aesthetic sits somewhere between nature documentary and speculative myth, balancing satire with seriousness. The piece invites laughter, yet beneath its absurd tone lies a sharp critique of fetishization and misreading. This piece feels inventive, politically aware and refreshingly confident in its strangeness.
If the first two works were conceptually anchored, Remains Still by Lilah Bobak shifted matters toward abstraction. Developed from the choreographer’s costume project, entanglement, at the London Contemporary Dance School, the piece foregrounds collaboration between choreography, sound and design.
The reflective costumes immediately catch the eye. As they shift, they gleam and scatter light across the stage, making the dancers look almost as if they are glowing. The whole piece is striking, if at times slightly overwhelmingly so.
A distorted guitar fills the space, the dancers seeming to move inside the sound, following its build-ups and slow fades. The movement feels freer, as if the they are following the music and their own impulses. They feel deeply connected, moving together with a strong sense of cohesion.
As the work progresses, the formal clarity starts to dissolve. The dancers stay alert to the space and to one another, giving the changes a clear sense of direction. Here, longing and intimacy are narrated and embodied.
This was an evening that reflected how contemporary choreography increasingly extends beyond the body movement into installation, ecology, costume design and multimedia framing. Each piece constructed a distinct environment: the maternal interior of Room, the speculative queer desert of Whiptail Lizards, and the reflective sonic landscape of Remains Still. All three showed clear artistic intention and thoughtful integration of design and choreography.