The Seb & Fiona Blog

Frauke Requardt presents…
ROADKILL CAFE
A dance work in two parts set to a searing jazz score from John Zorn, performed in full for the first time on 18 & 19 April 2008 at The Place



“And then the Prime Minister approaches me and says ‘Daniel, you’re jazz. What do we do? There’s a war on. We need to win it.’ I think and then I say ‘Just play man, just play.’”

In ROADKILL CAFÉ Frauke Requardt thrusts us into an unworldly, jazz-fuelled meeting place. Here we encounter a ukulele man and his kooky cowboy sister, twitching twins who swing in, play out psycho-sexual dramas and disappear, and a sense of secret trauma that threatens to meander its way to the surface.

Produced during residencies in Venice, Portugal and London, this is a darkly humorous, surreal piece of mimicry and mayhem, seduction and shock with superbly choreographed fantasies.

The piece is Requardt’s second full-evening work, coming after JAMMY DODGERS, which was seen first at The Place in 2006 and was also performed at the Royal Opera House. In that piece Requardt and her dancers collaborated with some of London’s most acclaimed jazz musicians, using live performances by The Ingrid Laubrock Quintet and Leafcutter John in an exploration of identity, entertainment and invention.

Roadkill Café takes these themes in a new direction, exposing a Lynch-esque world of both self-consciousness and wild abandon. We see a dog doing a dog dance, a tale of jazz overcoming the military, a tale of paranoia overcoming jazz and a round of subverted line dancing.

The piece was made during three residencies: one in a rural Portuguese town, at Rui Horta’s space O Espaco do Tempo, one in a foggy and mysterious Venice at the intimate Teatro Fondamente Nuove and most recently one in London at Greenwich Dance Agency and The Place, as part of Choreodrome. In each location there was a work-in-progress performance, introducing the work to a new audience and inviting comments and discussion. Each residency has served to enrich the work and leave its own individual fingerprint on the final result, turning it into a truly international work.

Frauke Requardt is a choreographer and dancer based in London. She completed her Masters in Choreography at the London Contemporary Dance School in 2003 and went on to be an Associate Artist at The Place until 2006. Earlier this year Frauke created work in Bogota, Colombia as part of a three-month residency organised by Visiting Arts. Together with dancers from Danza Cumon she created ‘Pequenas Delicias’, a piece made especially for restaurants. She was also commissioned to make a piece for a special fundraising event at Sadler’s Wells, ‘Back to Front’ where the auditorium was reversed with the stage for a three tiered chase scene.

Requardt has also been a dancer in Lea Andersons’ ‘The Cholmondeleys’ since 2004. She is really very German.

Listing information:

April 18&19 2008
as part of Spring Loaded

The Robin Howard Dance Theatre
The Place
17 Duke’s Road
London WC1H 9PY
Box Office: 020 7121 1100

For more information, guest list, images etc please contact Seb at Seb & Fiona: seb@sebandfiona.com