Roshni – Review – Sheffield Crucible Playhouse

By Clare Jenkins, November 2025

Outside Sheffield’s Crucible Playhouse, the November night is dark, wet and cold. Inside, though, all is light, warmth and energy, thanks to Sonia Sabri’s hypnotic dance tribute to life and the connectivity between humans and nature.

Sabri, Black Country-born and world renowned, is one of the UK’s leading exponents of Kathak, the traditional “dance of the storytellers” of North India. With her Birmingham-based company, she’s passionate about classical South Asian dance, and committed to making it more accessible, while also updating it for contemporary tastes with a fusion of east and west.

Roshni itself, she tells the audience, is a Persian word for “light, radiance, enlightenment” and the solo show evolved from research she conducted during the pandemic, asking people what they valued most. The answers focussed on togetherness, unity and hope.

“Beauty and fragility”

Those values are at the heart of the three central pieces danced here, which explore some of the highs and lows of life. The Call demonstrates the sometimes playful energy of Kathak dance. The dancer’s feet – garlanded with tinkling ghungroo, or ankle bells – have a life of their own as they tap in tandem with the music. The intricate, nifty footwork helps her spin giddily around, a riot of swirling embroidered skirts and silken shawls.

The Light, depicting a fairytale forest, shows the beauty and fragility of nature, our connection to it and the dangers it – and we – face today. Finally, The Waves – with its evocation of warfare – explores how to navigate a way through life’s challenges with courage and strength.

All three dances, together with brief introductory pieces, include facial, hand and leg gestures so expressive, they often resemble mime. The graceful twirl of a wrist or of fingers conjures up visions of fragile birds, leaping frogs, fluttering insects, flowers, a flowing river… Delicate facial gestures, meanwhile, convey mood and emotion as Sabri turns her face away from the rain or towards the sun, depicting old age and the energy of youth…

“Technical skills”

The live music, too, can at times depict birdsong, the wind, the ominous rumble of thunder, the din of chainsaws… On the otherwise bare stage, she is joined by world-renowned tabla player Sarvar Sabri, Sam Slater on guitar and oud (a Middle Eastern lute) and Katie Stevens on the flute-like kaval and clarinet.

Just as the dancing incorporates a hint of flamenco here, a touch of beatboxing there, so the music is also a fusion of global music styles: of folk, jazz, classical Indian, the occasional North African rhythm or Celtic one. Dizzyingly dynamic sequences might be followed by more meditative ones, the careful choreography sometimes interspersed with improvisations.

As the evening progresses, Sabri explains some of the technical skills and encourages the audience to echo the rhythms of the music with handclaps, and to contribute their view of the important things in life to the final short piece.

The result is a thought-provoking portrayal of the possibility of regrowth and renewal. “We have to change the negative to positive,” she says. “We have to find where the light is. Where Roshni lies.”

Roshni will next be performed in Derby in February: ssco.org.uk

Clare Jenkins( Writer )

Clare’s dream is to live in a hotel suite, safe from the bother of boiler breakdowns and crashing computers. Thanks to her husband Stephen McClarence’s work as a national newspaper travel writer, she’s been lucky enough to stay at hotels across the UK, India and many other countries – and has loved (nearly) every minute. As a journalist herself, she was a regular contributor to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour for over 20 years and has made features and documentaries for Radios 3 and 4. She’s also a former theatre reviewer for The Stage magazine and, with her husband, co-author of Teatime at Peggy’s: A Glimpse of Anglo-India.

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