With the background of one of the side walls of the Tower of London, more than 10 live musicians and singers and more than a 150 dancers, East Wall: Storm of the Tower turned out to be a huge success.

The amount of work and collaboration behind this festival is exceptional: from composers to costume designers, choreographers, producers, staff, just to mention a few.

The show is divided into 6 sections: the first four shows the work of choreographers Joseph Toonga, James Finnemore, Duwane Taylor and Becky Namgauds with music composed by Frédéric Despierre, Joel Harries, Sabio Janiak and Domenico Angarano respectively.

Themes around leadership, protest, diversity, and community is combined with a powerful percussive music.

The fifth section was choreographed along with music composed by Hofesh Shechter, and performed by his second company.

Eight talented dancers were engaged in a sensuous and captivating dance, although the movement language that he uses is now very characteristic, I could still see each of them as individuals.

A bit of sarcasm and dark humour in the way of opposing celebratory gestures, with explicit although fake violence.

More than anything else, it was such a joy to see so many young dancers just going for it! Completely committed to what some of us know can be a very exhausting and tedious process.

However, it was more than clear that the whole show under the general direction of Shechter was driven with professionalism and dedication that resulted in a very neat and exciting evening.

The opportunity for these young dancers (most of them coming from youth companies) to share the space and time with such a professional team including the dancers in Shechter II must’ve been an invaluable experience that will enrich each of them in their personal journey, whether they become professional dancers or not. And that is worth celebrating!

Reviewed by Coral Montejano Cantoral on 19 July 2018 at East London Dance.