The Place has announced the extension of DONUTS’ UK tour, the highly anticipated dance piece by award winning choreographer Jamaal Burkmar and performed by his newly formed company Extended Play.
DONUTS returns to The Place in London for one night only on 15 FEB, with the Spring tour commencing in Newcastle at Dance City on 4 FEB, followed by performances at Warwick Arts Centre (Coventry), The Lowry (Salford), the Riley Theatre (Leeds), Stephen Joseph Theatre (Scarborough) and Skipton Town Hall (Craven).
Inspired by classic sitcoms of the 90s & 00s, DONUTS follows a group of young friends as they evolve over time. Borrowing familiar tropes from shows such as Friends, Seinfeld and Community, Extended Play uses contemporary dance as a medium to explore how friendship is represented, authentically and otherwise, in mainstream media. The outcome: DONUTS perfectly captures the joyful intensity distinctive of young friendships in a way that’s universally recognisable.
Extended Play are best known for their break-through Instagram reel series JUKEBOX, in which dancers match precision dance technique with popular music, gaining them 15k Instagram followers overnight (@ExtendedPlayDance). Having had to move their dance online due to the pandemic, DONUTS is the first opportunity for fans of their viral content to experience their distinctive and dynamic style of dance on stage.
Soundtracked by an electrifying score from genre-defying, electronic jazz and funk artist Jameszoo (whose debut album ‘Fool’ turned critics heads in 2016), DONUTS is a celebration of how music brings people together, no matter what life throws at them. Choreographer Jamaal Burkmar places music at the heart of his creative process, drawing on his own relationship with music and its influence on his friendships growing up.
On this, Jamaal Burkmar says: ‘DONUTS is my version of Seinfeld or Friends, but it’s true to the friendships I had growing up and really heavily influenced by the dancers’ own friendships. It’s my way of bringing contemporary dance to a TV audience in the same way we brought dance to a digital one with DONUTS. Anyone will be able to watch the friendships on stage and be able to recognise themselves there.’
Bursting with precision and soul, DONUTS is a hypnotic and playful ‘groove along’ to jazz and funk.
