Face to Face

Jo Willis recalls it as, "One of my favourite shows and sadly one of the least recorded."

Face to Face by Shallal Dance Theatre was a show with confident, sophisticated yet simple improvisations, gentle humour and sensitivity, and a wonderful colourful array of performers.

The Acorn our usual venue was being upgraded to be more accessible and so Face to Face was performed at Penwith College, Penzance with the support of Ian While ( Sam's dad) lighting and with limited publicity. It featured music by Robert Fripp who later became our patron. It was well received and dances from the show were used in outreach performances.

*Rory Mcdermott used the show to explore voice work he went on to use in Unspeakable Rooms which was performed at The Tate St Ives, Leeds Dartington, Battersea Arts Centre and in the USA. 

The Unspeakable Rooms written by Alaric Sumner and performed by Rory
McDermott, Battersea Arts Centre, London, 3rd October 1998.
The text was written by Alaric Sumner for Rory McDermott to interpret and
perform. The performance by McDermott, devised by McDermott, is an
interpretation of the text by Sumner.

 After this show Shallal stopped. Many factors were involved: our small regular funding stream dried up, our administrator was unwell and moved away, our director was expecting her third child and some performers left the area and it seemed a good time to stop. However hurray! we were asked to reopen in 2002 with three year funding - thank you to the Penzance Healthy Living Initiative - and we are still here!