Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Lots to love in QDance’s Re:Incarnation. The Nigerian troupe began an ambitious nine-city UK tour at London’s Southbank Centre this week, with a piece that blends street dance and Yoruba ritual. Tireless physicality, vivid stage pictures and strong, rhythmic score offer all the ingredients for a great show, but the vignettes by founder director Qudus Onikeku vary in quality over the long 90 minutes.The bare black stage is furnished with a jumble of waiting costumes plus two live musicians: Simeon Promise Lawrence (electric guitar) and Daniel Ifeanyi Anumudu (congas and talking drum). Lawrence supplements the live material from his mixing apparatus with sampled blasts of trumpet and a sound collage of political speeches, traffic noise and car horns to evoke the sonic overload of downtown Lagos.There are three main sections: Birth, Death and Rebirth. The QDancers begin with a robotic skit on the tedium of rat-race routine — brushing teeth, shining shoes, working on a production line — before returning home for some equally metronomic sex. Finally, a woman downstage gives noisy birth and the ensemble break ranks in a celebratory frug. This cheery atmosphere is interrupted by an ugly fight that leaves the victim thrashing about on the floor like an inverted beetle desperately trying to right itself.Mary Peter Ochei’s costumes are a rich mix of paintbox casuals and ritual garb. One sequence has the cast bent double and festooned with knotted string for a crazed chicken dance. In another, the men add to their height with fantastical headdresses adorned with weird little gonk faces — a nod to the Janus masks of Nigerian masquerades.The closing sequence, Rebirth, begins with Esther Essien intoning a series of Yoruba proverbs: “If you do not lose your head, your head will not lose you” or (my personal favourite), “One piece of wood will start the fire.” She continues, deadpan, as her colleagues smear her and themselves with silvery-black body paint in readiness for the finale. Grouped in battle formation, they bounce forward on their fleet, percussive feet. It cries out for some kind of climax — a blast of sound or a flash of light would do — but this release never comes and the cycle of life continues on its way.★★★☆☆Touring the UK to October 19, danceconsortium.comMeanwhile, across the Thames, Covent Garden’s Linbury Theatre is hosting the 10th anniversary revival of Kate Prince’s The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Prince reimagines Carroll’s characters in a group therapy session — body dysmorphic Alice, shouty crackers Queen of Hearts — whose neuroses become the pretext for a bravura display of hip-hop from ZooNation company.At two and a half hours, the show remains far too long and the mental health message — “There’s no such thing as normal” — is hammered home without mercy, but the spoken narrative is witty, Josh Cohen’s clever songs are soulfully sung and the dancing is first-rate. Tommy Franzen and Isaac “Turbo” Baptiste are hard to match in their original roles as psychiatrist and Hatter but new boy Jaih Betote gives them a run for their money as the obsessive-compulsive White Rabbit. ★★★★☆To September 24, rbo.org.uk
