Touring
SEQUINS ON MY BALCONY: by Yvette Cowles & Peta Lily
Rosemary Branch Theatre
2 Shepperton Road, London N1 3DT to 19 October 2014
Tour dates 9 November, Hoburne Bashley, New Milton; 1 December Beaufort Ladies Lunch, Newark; 31 January Newcastle; 21 March Cambridge. Details www.DanceYourselfHappy.com
Evenings 7.30pm Sun 5pm
Runs 1 hr No interval
TICKETS: 0207 704 6665
www.rosemarybranchtheatre.co,uk
Review: William Russell, 17 10 14
Smiling Through
For 20 years Yvette Cowles had a successful career in publishing, studying belly dancing in her spare time having discovered the joys of the dance while a student in France. Then she got breast cancer. This hilarious, touching and moving show is about life without breasts, bosoms, mammaries, tits, chesticles, bazookas, boobs, jugs, Bristols and – volunteered by me, well a chap’s got to say something – knockers. And she did ask.
Apart from listings the euphemisms used to describe those female appendages with which society is so obsessed, she dances with veils, dons sequins, talks about her career in publishing, how she found the dance, and offers someone in the audience a cup of tea. She tells how her mother also had cancer, delivers a devastatingly funny account of how when she went for treatment with mother as company everyone kept treating mother as the patient. And demonstrates with great charm and the skill of a stand-up comedian that in spite of three bouts with cancer – the first was in 1996 – she is by no means finished, even if her “balcony” happens to be empty.
Cowles teaches classes to women at Cancerkin, raises funds for breast cancer charities here and in Egypt, and dances and choreographs at events in the UK and abroad as well as running courses on the history, culture and practice of belly dance and performing her show. She is also good at getting the audience to join in. Boy can that girl ululate – and so can the audience by the time she is finished with us.
At the end, dancing in a gorgeous red sequined dress studded with dark stones she whirls gracefully into the darkness.
Yvette Cowles
Director Peta Lily
Costumes: Vashti/ Doreen Cowles
Lighting: Jim Seconde
Technical/Logistics: Tim Richards/So-Simple Sound, Lighting & Vision
2014-10-19 14:15:03
