Review: Change Tempo, The Barbican  

As part of Dance Umbrella Festival 2025, London’s international dance festival,  Change Tempo at Barbican Pit draws together two quite disparate pieces, offering mixed results. 

Siren Dance is performed by Lilian Steiner, a Stockholm-based Australian artist and a dancer with Cullberg Dance Company. Her solo piece draws on the idea of the sea siren,  exploring themes of transformation and power. It’s a rather abstract work that, although giving a platform to Steiner’s obvious abilities, is somewhat unsatisfying in its overall  delivery.  

She begins draped in light gauze, marking distance as she covers the set, often en pointe, and repeating patterns punctuated with minor disruptions. Gestures indicate a narrative that I had difficulty tracking, but there are some lovely moments that suggest female subservience and dominance (a flutter of eyelashes speaks volumes). The atmospheric music (Marco Cher-Gibard) becomes viscerally resonant as the dance becomes more frenetic, and she finally screams into an overhead microphone. 

At this point, the movement pauses while Steiner stands to one side and changes into a seaweed-suggestive, ominous costume (Giovanna Yate Gonzalez). This takes some time and really doesn’t add to the dance other than to overly mark a moment of transformation. Significant floor work follows, which sees her organically devolving,  becoming a dark mermaid. Interacting with a fishing net, treasures are discovered,  which she offers towards the audience, before discarding them. It’s soulful and abstract, fluid and moody. Final captions describe ideas of vertigo, but these don’t  really satisfactorily tie in with what has been presented and feel grafted on. 

Clearly, there is talent here, but the message is obscure and the treasure not entirely delivered. A tightened structure would perhaps help make the work more effective. 

After an interval, and on the flip side of the coin, we have Spanish Flamenco dancer and actor María del Mar Suárez/La Chachi’s Random Taranto. 

There’s comedy from the start as two women in sportswear sit together in silence, one eating sunflower seeds and spitting out the shells, the other rolling cigarettes. From this mundane tableau, magic emerges.

Suárez and singer Lola Dolores engage with music only they can hear, initially mouthing words and tapping along, but eventually exploding into tremendously exciting Flamenco song and dance. Shell suits become bolero jackets, the frills of the traje are suggested on the trim of trousers, and the pair fill the room with energy and humour. It’s comedic and almost pastiche, but it’s clear that if they were to play the music aloud and change to traditional costume, instant gravitas would be supported by a solid core of talent. 

Random Taranto is completely exhilarating and celebrates so much about the essence of flamenco as it draws together past and present, classic and contemporary moves,  and above all, demonstrates the uncontainable passion it provokes. This irrepressible dance creates its own music, tells its own story, and there’s clarity throughout. The  audience embraced the joy, stamping their feet raucously come the bows. 

It’s certainly interesting to see these pieces side by side, but it’s really not clear how they ended up together. It makes for a mixed evening, but one that ends with delightful energy and a glorious celebration of dance. 

Siren Dance 
Concept & Choreography: Lilian Steiner 
Composition: Marco Cher-Gibard
Costume Design: Giovanna Yate Gonzalez
Producer: Freya Waterson 

Random Taranto  Direction & Creation: María del Mar Suárez (La Chachi)
Lighting: Design: Azael Ferrer
Costume Design: Eva Hurtado

Change Tempo has now completed its run. Find out more about Dance Umbrella  Festival 2025 below.