08-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Our Mighty Groove transports audience into heart of club life
The new venue Sadler's Wells East starts with a party. Vicki Igbokwe-Ozoagu's Our Mighty Groove begins as a theatre piece, introducing us to partygoers arriving at a club night. After the interval, it whisks the audience into the heart of the club, and into the dancing.
It underlines the flexibility of the new space, part of the growing East Bank cultural quarter in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Sadler's Wells is one of a group of big names opening centres here, including BBC Music Studios and the V&A. There's a focus on education and creation as well as performance: Sadler's Wells East will be home to Academy Breakin' Convention and the Rose Choreographic school, with six dance studios alongside the 550-seat auditorium.
Designed by architects O'Donnell + Tuomey, it's an airy, welcoming building. Glass walls give views over the park, and encourage people in to the cafe and public performance spaces – there's a dance floor for free events. Circulation spaces are generous and lightly industrial, smooth concrete softened by wood.
Reworking her 2013 hit for the new venue, Igbokwe-Ozoagu is determined to show off the space and its ethos. Performed by Uchenna Dance Company, the original Our Mighty Groove was all immersive, drawing on the choreographer's joyful experiences in a New York underground club. For 2025, it starts as a theatre show with the audience in their seats, before putting the seating away to take us into the heart of the club. The cast has grown from five to 19, bringing in young local dancers.
In the theatrical first half, we see the club getting ready to open, with a voiceover introducing the staff and the regulars. Layered club styles give a sense of personalities, with event staff in hi-vis jackets bubbling over into hip hop and jazz steps.
There's an appealing energy to the show, but the earnest storytelling can slow it down. The cast of characters has been updated to include an influencer, phone in hand, but there's little sense of the club as a space to explore deeper identities, such as gender or sexuality.
For the second half, we're on our feet and on the dancefloor. Dancers and the voiceover give some simple instructions to get us moving. Dramas unfold in tiny vignettes, dancers popping up on podiums or strutting their stuff through the crowd.
Our Mighty Groove is still strongest when it shows people creating themselves on the dancefloor: dance as possibility, as self-definition. Shanelle Clemenson, a member of the original cast, is glorious as the queen of old-style Vogueing, a diva who parts the waves of clubbers with effortless command.
