Edinburgh comedy winners feature in Dartington's autumn dance line up

Award-winning, internationally acclaimed dance companies New Art Club, Clod Ensemble and the Richard Alston Dance Company will be in South Devon over the next two months.

Comedy dance duo Pete Shenton and Tom Roden are offering up 80s nostalgia with New Art Club’s This is Now at the KEVICC Ariel Centre in Totnes on Thursday, October 7.

New Art Club, who picked up Edinburgh Spotlight Best Comedy Award at this year’s festival for their Big Bag of Boom, deconstruct the first Now That’s What I Call Music album to inspire new moves that shed their own humorous, twisted light on then, the future and now. During the afternoon on Wednesday October 6, company founder Tom Roden will also host a workshop with dance students from King Edward VI Community College.

On Tuesday, November 2, the critically acclaimed Clod Ensemble will present Under Glass by artistic director Suzy Wilson and film and theatre composer Paul Clark, at Studio 31 at Dartington.

The performance, at once museum exhibit, gallery and medical laboratory, lifts characters out of the hurly burly of everyday life and frames their moments of solitude in giant jars; examining human beings attempting, with varying success, to live within their limits.

Each performance will last 30 minutes and each show has a limited audience capacity of 40.

Later in November Dartington welcomes the Richard Alston Dance Company who will be in residence from November 24-27 and will be performing a special lecture demonstration of their latest piece Overdrive, which features on the GCSE and A’ Level dance syllabus, as part of the Dartington Space initiative.

Richard Alston, the company’s founder and artistic director, is seen as one of the most inspiring and influential choreographers in British dance. On Saturday, November 27 the company will be offering interactive workshops and lectures to both teachers and performing arts students. Email arts.workshops@dartington.org

For more information on these events or to book tickets, contact the Dartington Box Office on 01803 847070 or visit the website