AMICI, Lyric Theatre, London
By Clement Crisp (Financial Times)
Published: June 16 2005

I count my evenings spent watching the work of Amici among the most rewarding in a year's dance-viewing. Amici is a theatre dance troupe that explores the potential of movement made by disabled and able-bodied performers, breaking down prejudices about what can be achieved by the handicapped when given the opportunity to express their own skills (which are often remarkable).

Amici is the product of Wolfgang Stange's determination to show what marvels may be obtained from such players, and this year the troupe celebrates its 25th anniversary. Stange, Berlin-born, a pupil of that admirable dance-teacher Hilde Holger, has battled against prejudice, zero funding, official lack of interest - and has never surrendered. He has also worked round the world, notably in Sri Lanka with the war-disabled, and his performances have moved audiences profoundly.

His latest show, Stars Are Out Tonight, at the Lyric, Hammersmith, was created in collaboration with the theatre group Improbable, which has provided highly effective staging and masks. It concerns a journey, by the gifted Pius Hickey (a member of Amici), in quest of moral and emotional justice for people whom the general public may feel are marginal to society.

Impossible to detail all that vividly happens, but three sequences will remain with me for ever: a dance for women on crutches, bravely beautiful, serene; a scene centred on a quadriplegic man whose abilities are the focus of dance movement; and, most daring of all, the closing sequence from The Rite of Spring in which two men move and respond to each other before a group whose minimal gestures are, like the men dancing, embedded in the score and massively effective. (The scene makes the portentous bumbling of the much-seen Nijinsky 'reconstruction' look even more fatuous.)

To Amici and to Wolfgang Stange, all gratitude. There are charitable organisations, and financial enterprises that should respond to Stange's noble mission with practical support.