Interplay by Phoenix Dance Theatre

Phoenix Dance Theatre presents a powerful mixed bill!

In Spring 2026, Phoenix Dance Theatre presents a striking mixed bill that brings together work by internationally acclaimed choreographers Travis Knight and James Pett (Pett & Clausen Knight), Ed Myhill, Yusha-Marie Sorzano, and Phoenix Dance Theatre’s Artistic Director, Marcus Jarrell Willis. This dynamic programme celebrates creative collaboration, placing dialogue, contrast and connection at its heart.

Across duet and ensemble works, the evening explores themes of duality and shared authorship, revealing how distinct artistic voices can intersect to create something greater than the sum of their parts. Each piece offers a unique perspective, united by a bold physicality and a deep curiosity about human relationships, rhythm and collective experience.
Originally premiering in New York in 2013, Marcus Jarrell Willis’s  Next of Kin has been newly reimagined for Phoenix Dance Theatre. The duet explores the subtle humour and tension between two kindred spirits navigating life together.  

Ed Myhill’s  Why Are People Clapping!? (restaged by Camille Giraudeau) is set to Steve Reich’s  Clapping Music and uses rhythm as its driving force. With wit and precision, the choreography highlights the music of life – rhythm can be found in a tennis match, footsteps in an empty street and in the beat of our own hearts. 

In Small Talk by Travis Knight and James Pett, two figures inhabit a shared yet distant space. Through quiet gestures and unresolved tension, the work reflects on relationships that fade not through catastrophe, but through the slow exhaustion of time. The work showcases a portrait of two people held in a fragile standoff, suspended between what they once knew and what they can no longer admit.

The evening concludes with a powerful new collaboration by Yusha-Marie Sorzano and Marcus Jarrell Willis. Inspired by ritual, meditation and the roots of hip-hop and house culture, Suite Release reclaims dance as instinct, resistance and communal connection, inviting audiences not only to witness movement, but to remember it.