Test Run is described as a blistering display of dance combined with beautifully crafted live music

THE Lawrence Batley Theatre’s focus on dance continues on Wednesday, June 4, with the arrival of a South Yorkshire-based contemporary dance company.

The Vincent Dance Theatre, founded almost 14 years ago, tours in the UK and abroad and devises dance theatre work in a variety of media and on different scales.

So far, it has created 12 full-length productions, plus live, video and interactive installations, short films and video works, as well as art publications and a large and informative website.

For its performance at the LBT the company will stage its first double bill featuring solo performances by two of the company’s key performers.

Test Run is described as a blistering display of dance combined with beautifully crafted live music.

It will be performed by Polish dancer Janusz Orlik to a multi-layered soundtrack performed live by violinists Patrycja Kujawska and Matt Howden.

Patrycja studied at the Academy of Music in Gdansk, graduating in violin. She now lives in Sheffield.

Matt is a critically acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer who records primarily under the name Sieben. He is based in Sheffield and has released five Sieben albums to date.

Test Run is well named as it is his first collaboration with Vincent Dance Theatre.

The piece begins with a gentle, intimate solo and Janusz’s movements are shaped by the physical and musical interventions of the two musicians who share the space with him to become a complex, highly structured trio, a game in which the dancer and musicians battle to keep control of the stage.

The evening’s second piece is Look At Me Now, Mummy, performed by a second Polish dancer, Aurora Lubos.

Look At Me Now, Mummy finds Aurora returning after a break to have her own baby in her homeland. This show finds her older but no wiser as she is lost in her own over-zealous imagination in an intimate, funny and deeply moving portrait of a woman contemplating motherhood and the trials of domesticity.

Aurora is described as a performer of rare beauty and wit and Look At Me Now, Mummy offers a showcase for her playful imagination and understated style.

Janusz, who was born in 1981 and lives in Poznan, Poland, is a graduate of ballet school in Warsaw.

He also studied in Austria and became a founding member of the Austrian dance company x.IDA and toured internationally with the productions of many choreographers.

One of those choreographers was Vincent Dance Theatre’s Charlotte Vincent who in 2002, invited him to join her company.

He continues to choreograph work in Poland, as well as dancing with the Sheffield company.

Aurora has worked extensively with Dance Theatre of Gdansk, where she lives and where she met Charlotte Vincent.

Charlotte was in Gdansk to workshop choreographic ideas as part of the Baltic University of Dance Winter Explosion festival. The two have worked together since the late Nineties, with Aurora performing in several of the company’s pieces.

The performance is at the LBT on June 4 at 7.30pm. Box office is on 01484 430528.