London's line-up of dance shows is set to be spectacular in 2015. Here are our highlights for the year ahead More dance features Christmas dance shows in London One guaranteed way to feel festive this Christmas is by seeing some particularly twinkly toes taking to the London stage The best dance shows this month Take your pick from the highlights of the London dance scene this month Rambert's new digs Rambert dance company has a new home on the South Bank. Why not drop by? A dance studio that you can’t jump up and down in and one working shower for 22 people isn’t really what the country’s best dancers deserve, but that’s what Rambert dance company has been living with at its Chiswick HQ. Aside from one of the studios not being able to withstand bouncing bodies, the building they’ve been based in for 40 years was too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter and very cramped. It’s just as well that a long-planned, £19.6 million project to build the company a new home has finally come to fruition. Standing behind the National Theatre on the South Bank, Rambert’s new base opens next week with a fanfare and a fortnight of free public events. It’s definitely worth having a look around. The concrete block of a building (very South Bank) by Allies & Morrison architects is smartly minimal and has a vast main studio – as big as the stage at Sadler’s Wells theatre. It also has a lot of showers. More dance features Behind the scenes with the
Making the video that launched a thousand hipwaggling imitations was a career highlight for the classically trained dancer whose first love was hip hop. ‘Beyoncé was someone I dreamed of working for,’ says Williams. ‘I thought she was on a completely different plane. I thought she walked on air. I thought she was a Martian! But she’s human, she’s real. She’s a really nice, normal person.’
A really nice, normal person with crazy natural talent and superhuman stamina, apparently. ‘She’s a very hard worker. She’ll go all night,’ says Williams. ‘She is full-out every moment and she sings in the studio just like she’s singing on stage.’ Williams has an equally impressive work ethic, fitting rehearsals for ‘Single Ladies’ around her Cedar Lake schedule – running out in her lunch break for an hour, then back to Cedar Lake, then out again at six to rehearse till midnight with Beyoncé. ‘It was hard but I had the best time of my life,’ she says.
Williams juggles working in the contemporary and commercial worlds because she gets bored fast, she says, and they demand different qualities. ‘In the commercial world, everyone is trying to be a diva. In the concert dance world, you have to mould yourself into whatever each choreographer wants. You have to think with your whole body.’
Williams’s versatility comes into play working with Beyoncé, who mixes moves from classic choreographers like Bob Fosse and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker with club trends such as J-Setting and cooking (yes, a dance where you imitate cooking moves. Get on this, London!). In contrast, this week she’ll be performing athletic contemporary pieces by Jirí Kylián, Crystal Pite and Jo Strømgren with Cedar Lake – a company that, we should say, boasts more than one blinding dancer. Put a ring on it (in your diary).