Press

About the company:

"This small, high energy company from Barcelona features the Thomas Noone brand of aesthetic athletics and potent drama laced with lunacy"

Magge Foyer, Dance Europe

Lugares Extrañamente Desastrosos

"Lugares Extrañamente Desastrasos (or Strangely Familiar Disasters) was described in the performance notes as a show with a "good dose of (black) humour" and it did not disappoint. Alba Barral opened the performance impressively with a dead, cold expression, silently screaming to the audience before happily creating a public display of affection with her partner, Javier G Arozena. She seamlessly switched from inner turmoil to a reflection of society's "Idealistic Love", highlighting our absurd human need to portray a public image whilst hiding our personal realities. As the four remaining dancers quickly followed on stage, I soon realised that Thomas Noone's humour was indeed black, although a whole spectrum of emotional colours was shown to great effect throughout the evening by his talented cast. Noone is incredibly adept at using a darker humour ironically and asking questions of his audience...."

"The praise for the depth of variety should, in part, be shared also by gifted English composer/musician Jim Pinchen, who effortlessly switched between five instruments whilst singing and sampling a wide variety of music live on stage, providing an exuberant score for a highly enjoyable evening."

"...The beauty of Noone's work is that he is able to thoroughly engage an audience throughout his choreography without sacrificing his movement content In addition to the strong dramatic side of the work, the dancers' dynamism was abundantly clear, as their athletic movement never ceased throughout the performance."

"... Noone deserves a larger company and budget in order to showcase his work to an even greater effect. He knows how to structure larger scenes well, and having a sizeable company would only highlight his strengths. He does not sacrifice technical ability for acting within his work as some other of his dance theatre contemporaries do. His love of movement is abundantly clear within his work and is all the stronger for it, Although I found myself seeing choreographic influences of Pina Bausch with the dark humour of a Pedro Almodóvar film, both of which I admire, Noone is definitely a choreographer who knows his own style. A style that is insightful, inspired, and one which can sometimes seem rare in contemporary dance ... humorous.."

Lee Bamford, Dance Europe October 2011

Glitch

... Glitch, composed of original lifts and, above all, magnificent transitions, managed to make four dancers of great technical and physical capacities shine, especially Alba Barral, who caught the eye with her elegant physicality. Slovenian composer Borut Krzisnik's music added a more picturesque ambience to the piece.

Clàudia Brufrau, Dance Europe, November 10.

...(In Glitch) Noone turns his movement language to represent internal turmoil. His clean cut choreography has reached a level of maturity that surely now deserves a company of large format to further develop his ideas full of crossings and group plasticity.

Barbara Raubert – L’Avui – 19/09/10.

Room

“Hurt Dance”

Intense, aggressive and choreographically versatile. This is “Room,” the latest work of Thomas Noone for his company. Ashe did in 2007 with Mur, Noone has created a piece of a disturbing beauty, in this line with the European contemporary dance scene, combining the violent and the the lyrical, in a fluid combination distils aggressiveness and abandonment...

The room, consolidates Thomas Noone Dance as one of best dance companies in the country (Spain) in its line. And to this, one must also consider the interesting work of Noone as dance programmer of the Sant Andreu Teatre (SAT!), where his company has been resident since 2005.

In this claustrophobic landscape we find three men - Javier G. Arozena, Horne Horneman and Arnau Castro- and three women - Alba Barral, Paloma Muñoz and Patricia Langa-. coexistence is hostile, each of them drags its miseries and their pain, that build in this room turned into as emotional jail. The intensity of the dance of each one of the interpreters can almost arrives to exhaust the viewer. The choral work is magnificent and shows the depth ability of the author to create rich choreographic combinations that are executed at an impressive speed...

Carmen de Val - El Pais - 01/11/10

Bound

“Intense Abstraction”

Bound is one of these creations where the spectator leaves the theatre exhausted, captivated by such intensity. The rhythm of the choreography makes the stalls vibrate with real, organic drive. Five interpreters brilliantly defend a piece of vital, animal dance, in which duos just happen and intermingle, via a true mastery of mishap, with the trios or unisons of the entire group. The dancers enter, exit, touch, even throw themselves against each other tracing impeccable diagonals that break corporal lines, advancing towards a sovereign and autonomous vision of the body...

Cristina Soler - Ddanza, April 09.

“Rich Austerity”

Seriousness has been one of the most notable characteristics of the work of Thomas Noone throughout his career, an approach fruit of the effort that knows that it will not receive immediate compensation and in the same way it eluding fireworks. An austere route, that the resident company in the Sat! defends integrating and assuming its maturity on the route marked by the English choreographer...

...in Bound, the formal simplicity hides a wealth of contents… in a work more flexible and sentimental that does not reject choreographic complexity to express itself.

Barbara Raubert – L’Avui – 17/04/09.

Crush

Thomas Noone Dance from Spain is visiting Sweden for the first time, and will soon be going into the studio to rehearse in collaboration with Norrdans. Before this, the guest company is putting on two performances in the county, in Sundsvall yesterday and in Härnösand tonight.

It's true that the choreographic piece Crush is based on Linn Ullmann's book Stella Descending, but it is intended to avoid any determined form, and it succeeds. Here, four people are dancing without establishing any relationships between each other. One girl - or two - seem to be searching for themselves and are battling with their surroundings. Moments of tranquillity interchange with moments of hand-to-hand combat and rough handling, thumps and slaps, and rag-doll comedy ..

...It's skilfully done: the bodies are like perfectly tuned instruments which play their pieces impeccably. It's precisely because of this that nothing stands between the spectator and the performance: no little moments of irritation are there to get hung up on.

Susanne Holmlund - Sundsvalls Tidning - 10/09/09

More coming soon!