Created and developed by three dance students looking to engage their fathers in their chosen craft beyond the standard attendance at the end-of-year showcases, this beautifully warm-hearted show has a most beguiling quality. Exploring not only their own relationships with their fathers, who appear alongside them here at the Battersea Arts Centre, they’re helped by a large supporting cast who bring their own father/child experiences to bear. Thus a whole spectrum of experience stands before us, asking what it means to be a son or daughter, to be a father, to be a dancer.
There’s a bittiness which is the hallmark of pretty much any devised show but equally a tautness which prevents Dad Dancing from ever being too indulgent. The women - Rosie Heafford, Alexandrina Hemsley and Helena Webb – use the full, expressive range of their contemporary dance skill to speak of what they’ve longed to say, the fathers – Adrian, Andy and David – bring their unique sense of movement which may be a mite more ungainly but no less eloquent in its willingness to participate in their childrens’ world, and the small but vital contributions from the chorus have a real potent power.