St. Gallen Dance Company in Hofesh Shechter’s From England with Love

Theater St. Gallen
November 6, 2026

Every time I watch a company for the first time, it is with some kind of trepidation. The question is always the same. Will they be as good as on the performance snippets they show online? The St. Gallen Dance Company (Tanzkompanie St. Gallen) turned out to be a wonderful surprise.

In From England with Love, the dancers create a world of beauty and heart-felt emotions, although having performed Shechter’s Contemporary Dance 2.0 in 2023, it is perhaps little surprise that they have so mastered his style.

The evening started with an audience warm up, which I mistakenly thought was going to be a spoken introduction. In the foyer of the 741-seat theatre, head of rehearsals, Guang-Xuan Chen, stepped onto a slightly raised platform. He showed three sets of easy steps, which he connected and everybody except for a very few, started to dance, first practicing, then to music for full blast. It turned out to be excerpts from the choreography and left everybody with a smile on their face as they entered the auditorium.

Shechter created From England with Love as a 30-minute piece for eight dancers for Nederlands Dans Theater in 2021. In 2024 he turned it into a full-length work for eight dancers for his Junior Company. For St. Gallen Dance Company, he has reworked it yet again for 14 dancers.

Not being familiar with Shechter’s world, I did not see many allusions to England except for the school uniform-like costumes (also by Shechter) and the characteristic slightly turned raised hand, with which Queen Elizabeth II used to wave to her subjects. No matter, because the piece is so full of recognisable emotions and so open that it called up a myriad of my own memories.

The school-uniforms and rucksacks brought associations to child- and adulthood. The first section, seemed to be pre-school happiness. The whole group stand together peacefully. They only move first their hands then their arms creating breathtakingly beautiful images, which at times look like migratory birds in flight.

The mood shifts with the sound of rain. The group disperses and puts on rucksacks. Perhaps the beginning of school. In spotlights, fog or daylight (lightning by Tom Visser), the dancers gather in ever changing groups, sometimes one breaking into a solo. The relations change between being amicable and hostile, and the group unites into what looks like one organism. Their movements alternate between round and flowing, and jagged; the dancers falling to the floor or touching their faces.

One scene is especially touching. A man dances between the rest of the dancers sitting in two rows on the floor. He lives out a series of agonizing emotions, perhaps recalling past memories. At the end he is embraced by a woman, who seems to comfort him.

A little later, the whole group seemingly goes berserk with self-destructing violence. One person tries to shoot himself pointing two fingers to his temple, another tries to choke himself, his hands squeezing hard around his own neck.

The piece ends with everybody standing in a group alternating between waving like the Queen and putting a hand on their hearts. Indecisively, the dancers almost leave and return. It’s as if taking leave of this period of their life was difficult.

As a whole, From England with Love seems like a stream of memories from the happy times before school, through times of friendship, mobbing and violence, until it ends with the uncertainty of what lies ahead.  

The music compiled by Shechter features his own creations alongside a mix of choral compositions by Henry Purcell, and works by Edward Elgar, Thomas Tallis and William H. Monk. At times the beauty of the music evokes the feeling of happiness. At other times, the chorals specially create a strong contrast to the violent action on stage. In between, techno beats bring us back to the world of today.

In this day and age, where subsidies for culture are often reduced or simply cut completely, it is remarkable that the Swiss town of St. Gallen, population around 80,000, maintains their theatre, which has three stages, and the St. Gallen Dance Company as resident. The director, now in his fourth season, is Finnish choreographer Frank Fannar Pedersen, who in collaboration with his associate artist Javier Rodriquez Cobas create a new piece every year. The company also presents pieces by other choreographers and tours extensively. In September they visited China and later this season they visit Germany and other towns in Switzerland.