Northern School of Contemporary Dance: VERVE 2025

The Place, London
March 22, 2025

This year’s visit to The Place by VERVE, the graduate touring company of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance featured a mixed-bill of three short pieces.

Let Me In, choreographed by Luca Signoretti, is a described as being a personal journey in which he explores why he is choreographing. It’s a question the audience might well have still been asking afterwards.

Signoretti makes good use of the space, and there are some interesting and very creative sequences, although there is also an amount of repetition, particularly in the arm movements. However, what turns a potentially engaging piece into an overlong, seemingly random, movement sequence was the lack of any discernible intent behind that movement, any meaning or even storytelling. However good the dancers, and they were good, without that, the 27 minutes felt rather long.

The second piece, Lotus, choreographed by Thanh-Tú ‘Sattva’ Nguyẽn, was an altogether different proposition. Short indeed, only ten minutes, but Lotus is original, creative, humorous, and engaging as she tells a story about moving from the aimlessness and nothingness to the finding and becoming. Nguyẽn also uses the stage space well.

The music, by Rommel Arasa Santos is immersive, and so fully integrated with the dance, that it was not possible to consider them as separate parts of the whole.

Ro-Mass, the final piece of the triple bill by Bosmat Nossan, explores the sharing of emotion, in this case grief, through the wordless medium of dance. It’s an esoteric theme, which dance is well placed to explore.

Nossan gives it a good airing, creatively and innovatively although the space is not as fully explored as by both Signoretti and Nguyẽn, and there was some choreographic repetition, which felt repetitive for its own sake, rather than adding to the narrative. Perhaps, a small amount of trimming, would remove that, keep the piece more engaging, and simultaneously give it more emotional impact.

The VERVE dancers, 16 chosen from over 130 worldwide, were quite excellent. One would expect them to be highly skilled and technically at the top of their game, as graduates from the world’s top dance schools, but less expected was the level of expression and interpretation that they imbued each piece with, which spoke of more professionally experienced dancers. As an ensemble, they moved as one when required to do so. Individually, they were interpretive and wholly engaging. All accomplished with a disarming sense of ease.

But why are lighting director Chris Yates’ lighting designs so dark, with little difference between the pieces? At times, it was impossible to see the dancers clearly. Unfortunate.

VERVE continues on tour to May 22, 2025.