Desert Island Dances

Contemporary Dance trail blazer Wendy Houstoun (DV8 associate) performs her latest showDesert Island Dances and takes inspiration from BBC radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, which gives you such a clear sense of somebody’s life and the small things that give life meaning.

A dancer moves inside a box;

A boat sails by;
The map is drawn and the territory staked out;
Messages in bottles and survival tactics;
All washed up and nowhere to go;

Consider what gestures and movement you might take to your desert island?

Both funny and melancholic, Wendy combines text and movement in Desert Island Dances and explores notions of absence and presence. This is a thank you to the many people and places that have inspired Wendy over the years; her mother, a dialogue in Düsseldorf, a private dance in a front room, a wedding.

Words to take you back, moves to calm you down, dances to remind you of home. In Desert Island Dances, Wendy Houstoun works with the words and movements that have come from many situations and people – a dialogue in Düsseldorf, a private dance in a front room, a wedding, another reality show – that will get her through a spell on the island.