Skip to main content

Review of Streets Ahead Dance Academy's Don't Stop The Beat at the Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton

A Small Mind was fully busting his hip hop moves at the Royal & Derngate last night. However thankfully is was all in his head rather than some kind of fit on the stage of the Derngate.

Thankfully for the audience for Streets Ahead's Don't Stop The Beat! the dancing was much more impressive on stage. Predominantly hip hop, but with elements of contemporary and tap, it all provided a quite breathless night of entertainment.

Breathless must indeed have been perfect summing up for the performers, especially the much older advanced group of dances, as they were hardly off stage during the near three hour show. Indeed courtesy of some dramatic quick changing that must have been going on behind stage, they occasionally ran off one side and with a brief period of darkness returned from the other side wearing something else and straight back into the next routine.

Routines covered a multitude of songs, although personally many of them to music that only serves its existence for hip hop dancing to. Swerving from what rather alarmingly sounded like explicit rap to Let It Go from Frozen could only be expressed as surprising. However when music and dance on the bill includes Thriller and The Little Shop Of Horrors, I offer little complaint.

Thriller was an absolutely great performance from some of the younger dancers and offered the unique chance to see one of the young lady zombies brush her hair back into place while pretending to be a zombie. You would never get that on The Walking Dead. As for Little Shop, a similar aged group all dressed as Seymour and one plant, short straw there, was great fun. We had other film tunes including a band of Minions and a crowd favourite Ice Age number.

The older performers were of course technically superior, however that is the wonder of these shows and those of the NMPAT ones, that you can see the evolution of the performers as long as they stick with it. There was as always a huge lean towards female performers over male, so much so that of the advanced group, the only male performer was Edward. He did however have to constantly be in the presence of young ladies, so its odd that there is not more interest in joining these groups. One day soon maybe it will be cool to dance again, well, as long as you have talent and are not a gangling mess of limbs.

Other rountines included a cool Chicago number, as well as the required Don't Stop The Beat number from Hairspray, splendidly featuring the aforementioned Edward gamely in a dress. I also loved the poignant number dedicated to the mothers of the performers. Thankfully there was not a father one or my invented child would have been exposed as being a figment of my imagination. Referring to this, it is a great shame that it always seems rather obvious at these shows that it is really a near total percentage of family and friends in the audience as these fun shows deserve to be seen by a wider audience.

My only reservation from the show was the awkward, pointless and really rather preachy singing part. I never really like seeing children being effectively used to prove a political point and it was technically poor as well, so it all felt rather hollow. More dance should have been of the order.

Thankfully in acts like the Fun Dance School one, the kids were allowed to be kids and have fun, with one young lady stealing the show in particular by either not wanting to dance or possibly just overcome by the whole situation.

Don't Stop The Beat was an excellent full night of entertainment which offered little to criticise other than the absolute devastation that the audience left in their wake. Come on guys, when did it become socially acceptable to leave so much litter behind at the theatre? However great show, very well supported and if you get the chance in the future, do go to see something of its ilk.

Performance reviewed: Monday 15th February, 2016 at the Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton.

Don't Stop The Beat was a one of event organised by Streets Ahead Dance Academy. For further details see their website at http://streetzahead.com/

Details of Royal & Derngate can be found by visiting their website at http://www.royalandderngate.co.uk/

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Murder She Didn't Write at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Murder She Didn't Write , stopping off for a four-day run at Royal & Derngate on a lengthy UK tour, treads the now well-worn path of an improvisational evening of theatre entertainment. Unsurprisingly, from the title, this show from Degrees of Error's takes a murder mystery as its inspiration, with the story influenced by ideas from the audience each evening. Due to this, Murder She Didn't Write and a review are very much an individual affair. What I saw in my evening at the theatre will differ significantly from what the audience will see the following evening; however, the fine performers will remain. The touring cast, in no particular order, is Lizzy Skrzypiec, Rachael Procter-Lane, Peter Baker, Caitlin Campbell, Stephen Clements, Douglas Walker, Harry Allmark, Rosalind Beeson, Sylvia Bishop, Emily Brady, Alice Lamb, Sara Garrard, Peta Maurice and Matthew Whittle. For my performance, Skrzypiec, Procter-Lane, Baker, Walker, Bishop, and Clements were on stage alongsid...

Review of Immune by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

The cover note for the script of Oladipo Agboluaje's Immune describes it as "a challenging science fiction play with a large cast", and the word challenging in this case is not a lie. This is a fast paced, multi-cast changing script which leaves little room for error for its young cast in the performance. If the script isn't enough to handle for the young performers, director Christopher Elmer-Gorry and designer Carl Davies have made the situation even more complex for the actors with the set and stage work. Having to manhandle great panels on wheels and a huge cube, which also splits in two occasionally, during scene changes requires skill, coordination and cooperation of a high level. As if all this is not enough, the actual story is epic enough for the relatively small stage of the Royal. Attempting to form an apocalyptic world (albeit only happening in Plymouth) offers challenges in itself, but Agboluaje's script does that in a sort of apocalypse in the teac...

Review of Legally Blonde at Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton

As I settled down in my chair at the Derngate to see this touring production of the musical Legally Blonde , I generally had no idea what I was letting myself in for. Never having seen the film, read little up on the show, as is my want, and sitting in a clearly unbalanced gender demographic, this show was quite clearly not targeted at me. As the opening number, a catchy, but the incredibly screechy song, Omigod You Guys was performed, I was not, let's say, won over at first. However, it was clear that this just served as an overwhelming and ridiculous setup to the boldness of the show. The second number, Serious was a much better experience and genuinely funny song and throughout the tracks to come, there was much better to come. Our lead is Elle Woods (a charming, bubbly Lucie Jones), a typical caricatured blonde whose sole aim in life is to get the hand of her love in life Warner Huntingdon III (Liam Doyle). When he breaks up with her in pursuit of someone "serious...