Lets get ready for a thrilling experience of dance, theatre and sociological discoveries: British physical theatre company DV8 is coming to meet the US audience of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Barbara in November!

Their American tour starts at the prominent Royce Hall on UCLA campus as a part of LA’s cherished UCLA LIVE series, on Nov. 6th and will bring us the 2007 production by Lloyd Newson , “To Be Straight With You”, the verbatim, interview-based exploration of tolerance/intolerance, culture, religion and homosexuality.

DV8 (Dance and Video Physical Theatre was formed in 1986 by an independent collective of dancers who, they claim, had become frustrated and disillusioned with the preoccupation and direction of most dance. The company has produced 15 dance pieces, which have toured internationally, and 5 award-winning films for television. Their work is about taking risks, aesthetically and physically, about breaking down the barriers between dance, theatre and personal politics and, above all, communicating ideas and feelings clearly and unpretentiously. It is determined to be radical yet accessible, and to take its work to as wide an audience as possible.

DV8 is motivated by artistic inspiration and creative need: these, rather than financial, organizational and touring demands dictate the creation of new works. Great emphasis is placed on the process by which new work is created. The company has fought successfully for funding to cover lengthy research and development periods in order to maintain rigorous artistic integrity and quality in each new project. For every one of its works since 1987, DV8 has commissioned set designers and living composes to help investigate the relationship between body, architecture and music. The focus of the creative approach is on reinvesting dance with meaning, particularly where this has been lost through formalised techniques.

“To Be Straight With You” is a hard-hitting and passionate 80 minutes that expresses what is often left unsaid. There are problems. For the first 10 minutes, the dialogue is hard to hear. It is also visually over-busy; the monologue form is limiting; and, like a great deal of verbatim theatre, it preaches to the already converted. But when it starts really getting physical, the gloves are off, both politically and creatively”, and from the master of ceremony, Lloyd Newsom: “I hope that through this work audiences will become more aware of the lives of people hidden under the veneer of a liberal and a supposedly tolerant society.”

“To Be Straight With You” comes to UCLA Royce Hall November 6 & 7, 2009.