‘Dancing on your Grave’ is a very odd combination of all singing and dancing musical spectres. Two musicians (one ukulele and one banjo) sing the storyline whilst three physical performers reenact the words. It takes a couple of minutes to be convinced, but the musicians quietly take you to the other side, a place where the dead yearn to be alive again. In each set piece, small stories are told where they describe the delicious details of lives that they will never touch again. The musicians project wonderfully throaty singing and engaging performances. The performance takes place in a relatively small space and it is wonderful to see how well they re-invent the space at the end of each song. The dancers are truly mesmerizing. What is interesting is the way in which the dancers repeat set movements throughout a piece. The dancers revolve through each set of movements sequentially and it’s wonderful to see these set movements evolve into something completely dissimilar when a different dancer expresses it.
Fans of physical theatre and their interplay with musicians/music will find much to love, though some people more used to a traditional ‘theatre’ show which tells a conventional story may be left baffled. It is a dance and musical interplay which highlights how wonderful life is. ‘Stop your wingeing’ they sing, for you are a ‘very very long time dead’.
The Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs dance company have always been regarded as something special but this is an unexpected delight.
4/5 
Yasmin Bushby
