THE STEPFATHER
CANDOCO DANCE COMPANY
choreography ARTHUR PITA
design SIMON DAW
lighting design CHAHINE YAVROYAN
music SYD FUNNEL
Inspired by country and death songs, Arthur Pita tells a macabre yet humorous tale of a sticky family situation. In this twisted yarn the CandoCo dancers are transformed into skittish characters who writhe their way through brazen dances and intimate interludes. With a ukulele, and a noose they unravel this murderous "dansical".
"
Pita has revealed himself not only as an inventive creator, melding dance and theatre into what he now styles “dansical”, but as an artist of darkest humour ... his individual and imaginative language sets him as an innovative creative force in the dance world. "
Ian Palmer
"
Pita is getting clever at staging dance narrative, and he is cleverer still at using the two disabled members of CandoCo's current lineup ... it dabbles with disturbing forces "
THE GUARDIAN
"
...fans of both vigorously clever, tongue-in-cheek dance-theatre and genuinely ghostly romance ought to be tickled and ingrigued by the whole thing. "
TIME OUT
"
engrossed in the characters: three twittering sisters in Grayson Perry frocks, their mother, a slinky virago who plays the ukulele, and an Alf Garnett in vest and braces, the titular stepfather. This last is creepily played by two men – one of them able-bodied, the other limp from the hips down so that, when clinging round the other's neck, he drags after him like a homunculus, or a trailing shadow of death - very funny and most original "
The Independent
"
Arthur Pita and Rafael Bonachela, both hot choreographic catches "
THE OBSERVER