Newport Riverfront’s dance week got off to a fabulous start with a return visit of the Jasmin Vardimon Company’s latest production Freedom.

Vardimon’s work is usually known for pushing boundaries and Freedom lives up to its title by exploring new areas in dance combined with comedy, drama, mime, sound design and video animation.

Exploring notions of what keeps our imagination free by using the backdrop of the sea, the six performers Luke Burrough, Kai-Wen Chuang, Esteban Fourmi, David Lloyd, Aoi Nakamura and Julia Robert combine flowing dance routines with dramatic action sequences. A broad pool of dance styles were drawn upon from modern to ballet and all blended seamlessly.

This allows the audience to go on a journey that tells stories within stories whilst making subtle observations on history, fairy tales and all too familiar topics including slavery and imprisonment.

The real groundbreaker of this show are the animation sequences, particularly when a green lizard appears to dance on one of the performers and another scene when the dancers are dramatically chased across the stage by a shadowy winged predator. While the performers utilised shadow and light to its fullest potential, sound design fused familiar classical and pop pieces with the weird and the wonderful including a nod to sound designs own innovators John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Breathtaking, mesmerising and frequently thought provoking Freedom is a must-see show and represents Jasmin Vardimon at her creative best.