ALCHEMY
Brighton Dome
★★★★
“highly skilled bodies in dialogue with their histories and with one another”
Liam Francis Dance Company’s Alchemy fused autobiography and ensemble work into a double bill that explored identity, memory and connection. The two contrasting pieces revealed both the playful, introspective side of Francis’s practice and the physical precision of a tightly-knit group, offering a performance that was as thoughtful as it was athletic.
Lyre Liar was the more explicitly personal half. A former Rambert dancer and Dance Europe ‘Dancer of the Year’ nominee, Francis revisited formative works of his career through fragments of repertoire by Merce Cunningham, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Kate Prince. Rather than offering a straightforward retrospective, the piece unfolded as a dialogue between earlier and present versions of Francis and the dancers who originated or inspired those roles.
Using a PowerPoint presentation as a framing device, Francis wove together a witty, self-aware commentary. Humour ran through the piece alongside a clear-eyed honesty about the demands of the profession and the constant negotiation between authenticity and expectation. Taking the lyrebird, the ultimate mimic, as a conceptual hook, Francis layered autobiography, dance history and anecdote. At times he conversed with his own inner voice, at others lip-synced to recorded interviews, building a case for choreography as something continually passed from dancer to dancer: imitated, reshaped and made anew.
For the framing sequences Francis appeared in formal shirt and glasses at a lectern, engaging directly with the audience. As each dance excerpt emerged he shed a layer of costume, revealing a sequence of differently coloured bodysuits. In the final stage these were tied back together, recalling the fanned plumes of the lyrebird itself. At times the structure felt episodic, but the openness of the performance held it together, the body carrying both technical precision and lived experience. Francis’s control was evident in the clarity of line and phrasing, yet he allowed vulnerability to sit alongside virtuosity. Given the play on the spellings Lyre and Liar in the title, how much invention sits beside imitation remains a tantalising question. Sound design and composition by Jethro Cooke incorporated additional music by Massive Attack, David Tudor, Philip Selway and Claude Debussy.
Where Lyre Liar embraced the whimsical, A Body of Rumours committed fully to the physical. Four dancers shared the stage: Francis, Eloy Cojal Mestre, Jacob Wye and Stephen Quildan. Francis’s choreography drew on ballet, hip hop and contemporary forms, skilfully showcasing the distinct performance styles of the quartet. The movement language was fluid and grounded, at times competitive, at others unexpectedly tender. The dancers mirrored one another, folded into and lifted each other, moving with impressive assurance as they shifted seamlessly between tightly synchronised unison and looser, improvisatory exchanges. Their physical strength was matched by sensitivity, particularly in the weight-sharing passages where trust had to be visibly earned.
Set to live electronic music composed and performed by Chloe Mason, the score operated like a film soundtrack, mixed in the moment and closely tracking the dancers’ emotional trajectory. It sharpened moments of confrontation before opening into something more expansive.
Production design by Zoé Ritchie kept the stage largely open, allowing the dancers’ relationships to dominate, while the lighting design sculpted the space through shifting pools of brightness and shadow. In Lyre Liar a particularly effective sequence combined mirrors and lighting to create four versions of Francis: the real body, its reflection, a shadow and a silhouette. In A Body of Rumours, broader washes and sharper contrasts emphasised the collective dynamic.
The evening opened with a ten-minute curtain-raiser, I.M.I.T.I.L., created by Francis in conjunction with fourteen dancers from Brighton, Hove & Sussex Sixth Form College. This brief piece echoed the programme’s wider concerns with community, as the dancers performed shared sequences that rippled across the stage like a wave.
With two very different works, Alchemy offered something immediate: highly skilled bodies in dialogue with their histories and with one another. For all the physical dynamism of the second half, it was the playful self-interrogation of Lyre Liar that lingered longest.
ALCHEMY
Brighton Dome
Reviewed on 4th March 2026
by Ellen Cheshire
Photography by Danny Fitzpatrick
