Windrush review – upbeat tribute to a generation who transformed Britain

Cast, DoncasterSharon Watson’s show retraces the steps of the Caribbean passengers who landed on British shores 70 years agoIt’s been 70 years – a lifetime – since 492 Caribbean men arrived in Tilbury, Essex, on the Empire Windrush, marking the start of the first postwar wave of UK immigration and, more nebulously, the end of an idea of empire. Sharon Watson, artistic director of Phoenix Dance Theatre, is a daughter of that generation, and her ambitious if flawed new show Windrush: Movement of the People serves to remember the lives of her forebears and to pay witness to the changes they heralded.That may make this show sound worthy but it is often infectiously upbeat. Christella Litras’s freewheeling, jazzy score winds through the work like a breeze, and in the opening scene – set in the Caribbean docks at the point of departure – you sense how much Watson and her dancers dig the African-inflected moves the migrants were to carry with them overseas: an easy lilt across the hips and shoulders, a rolling spine, a snap in the feet. Continue reading…
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