With The Tantrum Java Dance Theatre has created a magic work for children about navigating emotional terrain and how to cope with big overwhelming feelings. It is charming. The little people in the audience were enthralled from start to finish. There is a lovely balance between action and audience participation. Director/Choreographer Sacha Copland and her collaborators have an authentic and sophisticated understanding of how to connect with a younger audience. Their crisp modus operandi incorporates humour, rhythm, music, sounds and simple movements into a compelling 45 minute work. 

As is the nature of this company the boundaries between performers often blur so that composer and musician Tristan Carter also dances and the movement artists Bjorn Aslund and Ella Williams can rustle up tunes on the key boards. Carter breaks out a mean spoons solo and pounds out a compelling drum solo on a wooden bowl. They all have cheerful generous personas and the fluidity between idioms is refreshing. Carter has great comic timing and the children delight in him. Aslund and Williams are clean and precise movers. Asha Barr creates playful and vibrant costumes, and has done a sterling job on the production design with a playful set that is a narrow domestic strip where everything is covered in fake grass. There is a portal through a mirror which the performers eventually go through into a gobo speckled realm where all the known restraints disappear and large overwhelming feelings begin to emerge.

This brilliant use of space is a clever way to evoke the terrain of the psyche.

Inevitably things get a bit out of kilter and chaos ensues. Aslund and Wiliams could go much further with their emotional maelstrom.

The work is beautifully rounded off with a nice cup of tea and a chance to settle down.

By commissioning these Bite Sized Treats Capital E continues the valuable curation of high quality performance for children.

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