Sadler’s Wells marks the 20th anniversary of its present building with 20 newly commissioned works amongst a number of new and exciting projects for 2018. These include a special triple bill performed in its anniversary week in October from three distinctive choreographic voices who are creating work for their stage for the first time: Julie Cunningham, Alesandra Seutin and Botis Seva.
The full Summer and Autumn season:
The Tap Pack
THE PEACOCK
Tuesday 1 – Saturday 19 May
Inspired by the kings of swing: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jnr, The Tap
Pack brings a new, exhilarating energy to a timeless style.
With slick suits, sharp wit and songs from Sinatra to Ed Sheeran, Australia’s finest tap dancing performers are a cocktail of pure entertainment, serving up classics with a twist, with a live four-piece band.
Akram Khan Company
LILIAN BAYLIS STUDIO
Portraits in Otherness
WORLD PREMIERE
Tuesday 5 – Friday 8 June
Portraits in Otherness is a new platform initiated by Akram Khan and his producer Farooq Chaudhry, seeking to transfer the intangible values and philosophy of Akram Khan Company to a new generation of talents.
They invite four highly charismatic and distinctive dance artists to present solo work: Joy Alpuerto Ritter, Ching-Ying Chien, Dickson Mbi and Maya Dong, each embodying the echoes and primitive beauty of many dance languages both learned and inherited.
Maya Dong and Dickson Mbi: Tuesday 5 & Wednesday 6 June at 8pm
Ching-Ying Chien and Joy Alpuerto Ritter: Thursday 7 & Friday 8 June at 8pm
A Sadler’s Wells co-production
Akram Khan is a Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist
Birmingham Royal Ballet
Romeo & Juliet
Tuesday 12 & Wednesday 13 June
Kenneth MacMillian’s masterpiece returns to Sadler’s Wells for the first time since 2010.
Set to the stirring Prokofiev score, played live by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, Birmingham Royal Ballet presents Romeo & Juliet, the famous tragedy of two star-crossed lovers told through some of the most ardent pas de deux ever choreographed.
Alexandra Waierstall
LILIAN BAYLIS STUDIO
And here we meet
UK PREMIERE
Thursday 14 & Friday 15 June
Together with dancers Dani Brown, Evangelia Randou and composer HAUSCHKA, Alexandra Waierstall delves into hidden geographies, abandoned cities and no man’s lands, and investigates the relationship between man and woman, the environment and choreography.
With an acute sense of musicality and the body’s materiality, Waierstall, a distinctive new voice from Germany, creates a convincing world where new relationships arise between language, movement and space.
Contains nudity
Birmingham Royal Ballet
In the Upper Room mixed programme
WORLD PREMIERE
Friday 15 & Saturday 16 June
In this triple bill, Twyla Tharp’s monochrome In the Upper Room is set ablaze by energetic choreography and red pointe shoes. The virtuosity of ballet technique is glorified by Sadler’s Wells New Wave Associate and former Birmingham Royal Ballet dancer Alexander Whitley in Kin, plus new work by George Williamson as part of the Ballet Now programme.
Pre-show talk: Saturday 16 June at 6.30pm (free to BRB Friends and same day ticket holders)
AΦE
LILIAN BAYLIS STUDIO
WHIST
Tuesday 19 – Saturday 23 June
Inspired by the work of Sigmund Freud, WHIST invites you on a journey into the unconscious mind, through the dreams, fears and desires of a fictional family.
This one-hour experience merges physical theatre, interactive Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies and an art installation, in an environment that blurs the boundaries between consciousness and unconsciousness, reality and fiction, the physical and the virtual, exploring the story from one of the 76 different perspectives.
Semperoper Ballett (Dresden)
All Forsythe
Thursday 21 – Saturday 23 June
Based in Dresden, the Semperoper Ballett is internationally renowned for its distinguished ballet technique with both classical and contemporary repertoire. This triple bill of works by the visionary William Forsythe compliments the dancers’ technical expertise and physical prowess.
Opening the programme is the groundbreaking In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, a work that famously changed ballet forever with its deconstruction of the classical ballet technique. Neue Suite is made up of a series of pas de deux, choreographed between 1987 and 1999, set to music by Bach, Berio and Handel. Finally, lit by a single spotlight, 11 dancers cavort around a winding wooden wall in the energetic and expeditious Enemy in the Figure.
Nederlands Dans Theater 1
León & Lightfoot / Pite / Goecke
Tuesday 26 – Friday 29 June
The celebrated NDT returns with a revelatory programme featuring two works by resident choreographers Sol León and Paul Lightfoot: Shoot the Moon, an exploration of hidden emotions to a score by Philip Glass, and Stop-Motion, an attempt to capture the past, set to Max Richter’s haunting music.
There’s a battle for control in The Statement, created by Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Crystal Pite with playwright Jonathon Young, the masterminds behind the Oliver Award-winning Betroffenheit. And Marco Goecke takes inspiration from the music of Jeff Buckley in the emotion-driven Woke up Blind. Pite and Goecke are both NDT Associate Choreographers.
“One of world dance’s truly great companies” The Telegraph
Crystal Pite is a Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist
Hofesh Shechter Company
Grand Finale
Wednesday 4 – Saturday 7 July
Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Hofesh Shechter is known for his distinctive mix of dance, theatre and music. After a successful run last Autumn, Grand Finale returns with its vision of a world in freefall that is both bleak and beautiful.
10 dancers move with anarchic energy through a series of monolithic structures in Tom Scutt’s design, driven on by Shechter’s original music played live by an on-stage band. Grand Finale is at once wild, mesmerising and deeply elegiac.
Age Guidance: 14+
Hofesh Shechter is a Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist
Company of Elders
LILIAN BAYLIS STUDIO
Mixed Bill
WORLD PREMIERE
Friday 6 July
Since 1989, Company of Elders, Sadler’s Wells’ inspirational resident over-60s performance company, has been demonstrating the power of lifelong creativity and proving it is never too late to start dancing.
In this mixed bill they bring new work from three exciting female choreographers: Holly Blakey, Adrienne Hart and Seeta Patel. Showcasing their own unique style, these choreographers will draw out new ways of moving from this established company.
A Sadler’s Wells 20th Anniversary Commission
Latitude Festival
OFFSITE
Thursday 12 – Sunday 15 July
Since 2008 Sadler’s Wells has presented dance at Latitude, to audiences in excess of 80,000 people across the years. This summer we return to the festival for the 11th consecutive year, presenting a diverse programme on the Waterfront Stage. Full line-up to be announced.
L-E-V
Love Chapter 2
UK PREMIERE
Friday 13 & Saturday 14 July
Following her guest artistic direction of NYDC, Sadler’s Wells’ newest Associate Artist Sharon Eyal brings L-E-V, the Israeli company that she heads up alongside Gai Behar, in its first reappearance since its Sadler’s Wells Debut in 2016.
OCD Love, with its focus on the heart through the lens of obsessive-compulsive disorder, elicited critical and audience praise alike. Love Chapter 2 builds on those themes with an even darker take on loneliness, despair and the search for connection, in Eyal and Behar’s trademark club-like atmosphere, enhanced with a score by music collaborator Ori Lichtik.
Sharon Eyal was appointed an Associate Artist in the 20th anniversary year. Love Chapter 2 is the second of four presentations of her work at Sadler’s Wells in 2018.
“A grave beauty” The Guardian on OCD Love
Sharon Eyal is a Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist
Company Wayne McGregor
Autobiography
Thursday 26 – Saturday 28 July
For 25 years, Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Wayne McGregor has made choreography that interrogates life through the experience of the body. Now McGregor turns his attention to the body as archive, with a dance portrait illuminated by the sequencing of his own genome. In a continuous reimagining, Autobiography is reinvented at each performance, assembled from a collection of choreographic volumes which unfold uniquely every time.
Wayne McGregor is joined by collaborators: electronic musician and producer Jlin, designer Ben Cullen-Williams, lighting designer Lucy Carter, artist and designer Aitor Throup and dramaturg Uzma Hameed.
“Mesmerisingly good” The Guardian
A Sadler’s Wells co-production
Wayne McGregor is a Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist
Company Wayne McGregor is a Resident Company
Carmen La Cubana
UK PREMIERE
Wednesday 1 – Saturday 18 August
Carmen La Cubana is a seductive new musical featuring Bizet’s classic score flavoured with authentic Cuban styles. Inspired by Oscar Hammerstein II’s Broadway hit Carmen Jones, Christopher Renshaw (The King and I) directs this UK premiere, with new orchestrations by Tony Award-winner Alex Lacamoire (Hamilton & Dear Evan Hansen), mixing opera with salsa, mambo, rumba and cha-cha-cha and including musical favourites such as Habanera.
Featuring a cast of over 40 singers, dancers and musicians, Carmen La Cubanais a sultry take on one of the most famous operas ever created, set against the simmering turmoil of the Cuban Revolution in 1958.
“Hugely enjoyable and sexy… a fantastic adaptation” Le Parisien
Audio described performance: Saturday 11 August at 2.30pm
Touch Tour: Saturday 11 August at 12.45pm
Wilderness Festival
OFFSITE
Thursday 2 – Sunday 5 August
Sadler’s Wells presents work for the third year at Wilderness, the award-winning arts festival in Oxfordshire. Full line-up to be announced.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
THE PEACOCK
Tuesday 11 – Saturday 22 September
The award-winning all-male comedy ballet company, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (simply “The Trocks” to their friends) storms back to The Peacock with two programmes of side-splitting send-ups and hilarious homages to classical ballet.
Programme A includes Swan Lake (Act II), Trovatiara and The Little Humpback Horse. Programme B features Les Sylphides, Napoli and Raymonda’s Wedding.
Natalia Osipova
Pure Dance
WORLD PREMIERE
Wednesday 12 – Sunday 16 September
Superstar ballerina Natalia Osipova returns to Sadler’s Wells with a programme of dance works exploring both contemporary and classical repertoire rarely seen in the UK, including new commissions by Alexei Ratmansky and Iván Pérez. It features special guest David Hallberg – a Principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre. The full programme and further details of Osipova’s special guests will be announced soon.
“A spirit of joy, of technical bravura, of sheerest delight” Financial Times on Natalia Osipova
A Sadler’s Wells 20th Anniversary Commission
A Sadler’s Wells Production
English National Ballet
Lest We Forget
Thursday 20 – Saturday 29 September
To commemorate 100 years since the end of the First World War, English National Ballet revives its “moving and ambitious” (The Independent) triptych reflecting the experiences of those who fought, and those who stayed behind.
The programme features works by two Sadler’s Wells Associate Artists: Russell Maliphant’s Second Breath and Akram Khan’s award-winning Dust. Also presented is Liam Scarlett’s No Man’s Land, an evocative piece that intertwines the destinies of the soldiers and munition workers.
“True to its title – it stays with you long after curtain-down” Daily Telegraph
New English Ballet Theatre
THE PEACOCK
The Four Seasons / Remembrance
Thursday 27 – Saturday 29 September
A company dedicated to nurturing emerging talent, New English Ballet Theatre returns with two contrasting works.
Former English National Ballet soloist and choreographer Jenna Lee takes Max Richter’s vibrant re-composition of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons as the foundation for her neoclassical ballet. Created by world-renowned choreographer Wayne Eagling, Remembrance is inspired by Marie Rambert’s life during the Great War and is set to Handel’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, played live by The English Concert with chorus and soloists.
Taj Express THE PEACOCK
Tuesday 2 – Saturday 20 October
Vaibhavi and Shruti Merchant’s glitzy Bollywood extravaganza is set to dazzle once more as it returns to The Peacock. Featuring music by Academy Award-winning composer A.R. Rahman, and Bollywood composers, Salim & Sulaiman Merchant and Monty Sharma, Taj Express showcases a fusion of classical Indian and contemporary dance in a celebration of the world’s most prolific film industry.
William Forsythe
A Quiet Evening of Dance
WORLD PREMIERE
Thursday 4 – Saturday 6 October
William Forsythe is one of the foremost choreographers of his generation. For this unusual configuration of new and existing work, Forsythe creates an intimate, pure evening of choreography, stripped down to its essence. The works range from sparse analytic condensation to baroque inspired counterpoint. The intricate phrasing of the dancers’ breath is the primary accompaniment for a distillation of the geometric origins of classical ballet.
The evening is performed by seven of Forsythe’s most trusted collaborators who promise to provide insight into the workings of ballet and the mind of the man who has dedicated his work to this task.
A Sadler’s Wells 20th Anniversary Commission
A Sadler’s Wells Production
Director’s Conversation: Friday 5 October at 6pm
Young Associates
LILIAN BAYLIS STUDIO
Mixed Bill
WORLD PREMIERE
Tuesday 9 & Wednesday 10 October
This exciting mixed bill is the first opportunity to see the work of the inaugural Young Associates, Sadler’s Wells’ new programme that aims to both celebrate and support young artists under the age of 25, as they embark on their choreographic careers.
In their Sadler’s Wells debuts, burgeoning choreographers Anthony Matsena, Wilhelmina Ojanen, Ruby Portus and Christopher Thomas showcase the innovative talent and original voices that mark them out as choreographers to watch.
A Sadler’s Wells 20th Anniversary Commission
A Sadler’s Wells Production
Julie Cunningham / Alesandra Seutin / Botis Seva
Reckonings
WORLD PREMIERE
Thursday 11 – Saturday 13 October
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the current theatre, Sadler’s Wells presents three commissions by a new generation of UK based dance-makers: Julie Cunningham, Alesandra Seutin and Botis Seva.
Julie Cunningham recently launched Julie Cunningham Company after 15 years of dancing with the renowned Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Michael Clark Company. Alesandra Seutin founded Vocab Dance Company in 2007 and has been making work, performing and teaching internationally for over a decade. Botis Seva and his collective Far From the Norm have previously performed at Sadler’s Wells with Breakin’ Convention, and curated a Wild Card evening. Using the foundations of hip hop, Seva has created a physical dance language of his own.
Reckonings showcases distinctive voices who help us see the world in a different light.
A Sadler’s Wells 20th Anniversary Commission
A Sadler’s Wells Production
Dein Perry’s Tap Dogs
THE PEACOCK
Tuesday 23 October – Saturday 10 November
Dein Perry’s multi award-winning Tap Dogs returns to the London stage, showcasing high voltage, rugged, raw talent.
The global smash hit has appeared in over 330 cities on six continents and has been seen live by over 12 million people. A worldwide television audience of over 3.4 billion saw 1,000 Tap Dogs performing in the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney Olympics.
“Positively electrifying” The New York Observer
Birmingham Repertory Theatre
THE PEACOCK
The Snowman ™
Thursday 22 November – Sunday 30 December
Based on the much-loved book by Raymond Briggs and film directed by Dianne Jackson and produced by John Coates, this festive stage show has transported generations of children to the wintery wonderland of a boy and his magical snowman.
With a wonderful mix of exquisite dancing choreographed by Robert North and Howard Blake’s music performed live, including Walking in the Air, Bill Alexander directs the enchanting show, which has design by Ruari Murchison and lighting by Tim Mitchell.
By arrangement with Snowman Enterprises Limited (A Penguin Company) and Chester Music Limited.
New Adventures
Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake
Tuesday 4 December 2018 – Sunday 27 January 2019
Swan Lake returns with a fresh look for the 21st century. Retaining the iconic elements of the original, Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Matthew Bourne and award-winning designers Lez Brotherston (set and costumes) and Paule Constable (lighting) will create a re-imagining of the classic production.
Thrilling, audacious and emotive, this Swan Lake is perhaps best known for replacing the female corps-de-ballet with a menacing male ensemble. Collecting over 30 international accolades including an Olivier and three Tony Awards, Bourne’s powerful interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece is a passionate and contemporary Swan Lake for our times.
Matthew Bourne is a Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist
Digital plans
In a new partnership with the BBC, Sadler’s Wells curates and creates four 30-minute artist-led films for broadcast on BBC Four this April as part of the channel’s dance season. Each film introduces audiences to a different dance artist from diverse backgrounds and styles, taking us behind the scenes to observe them at different points in their career as they create new work or prepare for a new performance. Including extended sequences of performance, each film offers viewers a unique insight into the world of dance in Britain today.
Acclaimed former Royal Ballet Principal, 43-year-old Zenaida Yanowsky, plans to overcome knee surgery and fight her body back to fitness to perform one of ballet’s best-known solos, The Dying Swan, marking one of her last public performances. Transitioning from his street dance roots to contemporary dance, Dickson Mbi prepares to choreograph and perform his first contemporary dance solo for an evening curated by Akram Khan Company.
Audacious and funny, Leeds-based Carlos Pons Guerra’s darkly humorous, highly theatrical and physical work often explores questions of gender and sexual identity. Now for the first time, he choreographs a new children’s production, Penguins, for Birmingham Repertory Theatre, which tells the true story of two male penguins raising a chick. Experimental and highly original, Shobana Jeyasingh reveals the research and creative process for her new work Contagion, which evokes the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed over 50 million people.
Production Company: Sadler’s Wells & ClearStory
Director: Glen Milner
Producer for Sadler’s Wells: Bia Oliveira
Executive Producers: Russell Barnes, Molly Milton, Alistair Spalding
Exec Producer for BBC: Emma Cahusac
Sadler’s Wells is also partnering with Channel 4’s Random Acts to commission three original films from Julie Cunningham, Alesandra Seutin and Botis Seva for broadcast later in the year. Linked to the new works the artists are creating for Reckonings in the 20th Anniversary week, the films will be creative entities in their own right, offering the three distinctive younger artists an opportunity to tell their stories in a different medium to a wider audience.
Random Acts is Channel 4’s short film strand dedicated to the arts, founded in 2011. Random Acts represent the worlds of art, music, dance, animation, spoken word, performance, plus uncategorisable combinations of the above, pushing boundaries, provoking thought and playing with form. The strand showcases work from as diverse a range of creative people as possible from across the UK and beyond – giving breaks to new talent and premiering work by established ones. Random Acts is commissioned by Catherine Bray and produced by Little Dot Studios.
Celestial Bodies is a new virtual reality experience adapted from Alexander Whitley’s production 8 Minutes, which premiered at the theatre in June 2017 and was commissioned as part of the New Wave Associates programme. This is the first arts-inspired experience made by the Guardian’s award-winning VR team, with the Alexander Whitley Dance Company in association with Sadler’s Wells. It uses the latest 360 and motion capture technology to explore the human relationship with the Sun, enabling viewers to get closer to the dancers. Audiences can preview it at Sadler’s Wells’ Sampled festival on 2 & 3 February 2018 and it will be available soon on VR platforms (Daydream, Cardboard, YouTube 360, HTC Vive).
Tickets for the Summer/Autumn 2018 season are on public sale from Monday 26 February at 10am.