Sadler’s Wells announces its Spring 2019 season

NEW SEASON CONTINUES SADLER’S WELLS’ TRADITION OF HIGHLIGHTING DIVERSITY OF TODAY’S DANCE STYLES, ARTISTS AND PERFORMERS

Featuring three world premieres, more than 15 UK premieres and a host of new creative partnerships involving artists from all over the world

WEBSITE: www.sadlerswells.com

These productions include a new collaboration between fellow Sadler’s Wells Associate Artists and long-standing artistic partners Russell Maliphant and Michael Hulls whose world premiere The Thread (15 – 17 March) is inspired by Greek mythology and historic Hellenic dances. Portraying the changing form of traditional and contemporary dance it is set to the explosive electronic music of Greek composer Vangelis, whose famous score for Chariots of Fire won him an Oscar in 1981.

Olivier Award-winning Damien Jalet, who choreographed Hussein Chalayan’s Gravity Fatigue in 2015, collaborates with Japanese experimental sculptor Kohei Nawa for Vessel (16 & 17 April). Blurring the lines between human form and its environment and inspired by the body’s composition predominantly being made up of water, the seven near-naked dancers inhabit a stage flooded with more than 7,500 litres of water.

Critically acclaimed Chinese choreographer Yang Liping collaborates with multiaward-winning lighting designer Fabiana Piccioli, and reunites with Oscar-winning designer Tim Yip, for her latest creation (9 – 11 May) – a radical retelling of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, using the iconic score alongside original compositions inspired by Tibetan music. This is one of three works in the season that re-imagines the famously controversial 1913 piece.

The United States’ oldest professional ballet company, San Francisco Ballet returns to Sadler’s Wells for the first time since 2012, with 10 works, all of which are UK premieres and none more than five years old. Included in the four mixed programmes of pieces by choreographers such as Cathy Marston, Alexei Ratmansky, Liam Scarlett and Christopher Wheeldon, is Arthur Pita’s Björk Ballet, inspired by the music and with the rare permission of Icelandic icon Björk Guðmundsdóttir.

Contemporary dance luminary Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker places worldrenowned cellist Jean-Guihen Queryas at the centre of her latest piece Mitten wir im Leben sind/Bach6Cellosuiten (24 & 25 April) in a rare opportunity to hear all six of Bach’s Cello Suites played live, together. Performed in tune with five dancers from her Sadler’s Wells International Associate Company, Rosas, the now celebrated Cello Suites were once barely known, only becoming so after an edition was discovered in a second-hand shop.

Three outstanding British companies present new work this spring. For its triple bill (14 – 18 May) acclaimed contemporary dance company Rambert presents a new piece by rising star, Marion Motin whose hip hop-influenced style is best known through her work for Christine and the Queens, while Sadler’s Wells Associate Company English National Ballet returns with its second mixed bill programme dedicated to female choreography. She Persisted (4 – 13 April) features the return of Pina Bausch’s masterwork Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Frida Kahlo-inspired Broken Wings, as well as the premiere of Nora, a new work by company member Stina Quagebeur, based on Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Matthew Bourne creates a new production for his multi award-winning Sadler’s Wells Resident Company, New Adventures. Romeo and Juliet (7 – 31 August) is a passionate and contemporary re-imagining of Shakespeare’s classic love story, bursting with youth, vitality and Bourne’s trademark storytelling, and featuring Britain’s brightest young dance talent alongside the New Adventures company. Directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, with set and costume design by Lez Brotherston, it features new orchestrations of the Prokofiev score by Terry Davies, played live by the New Adventures Orchestra and conducted by Brett Morris.