Monthly Archives: May 2017

Herb planting at Sadler’s Wells

At Sadler’s Wells, we have a Green Team that makes sure that all we do is as environmentally friendly as we possibly can. The team is responsible for overseeing the implementation of our Sustainability Action Plan and meets regularly throughout the year to review progress and discuss new ideas on how to further improve our environmental performance.

One of these ideas was for us to have our own, Sadler’s Wells-grown herbs. And so it was that Emma, our Director of Technical and Production and Chair of the Green Team, and Elsa, Administrative Assistant of the Visitor Services & Estates team, came in early one recent morning to haul around sacks of compost in our courtyard and plant parsley, sage, thyme, marjoram, chives and mint in a brand new planter built by Ghion, our resident carpenter in the Building Services team. The wooden herb planter is on wheels, so that it can be moved around to make the most of the sun.

Those summer mojitos will taste even better, knowing the mint comes from our own, mini herb garden!

 

Image: the new herb planter in the Sadler’s Wells courtyard.

Sadler’s Wells soaks up the sun and turns it into electricity

What better way to celebrate the summer than giving your photovoltaic cells a good clean? That’s exactly what Sadler’s Wells has done this week, as we prepare for the summer months. With average highs of 28 degrees this weekend, the solar panels will be working overtime to gather as much light as possible to turn in to sustainable energy.

Find out more about Sadler’s Wells’ sustainability policy on our website.

 

Image: solar panels on the roof of Sadler’s Wells’ building in Rosebery Avenue, Islington, London.

Nitin Sawhney receives Lifetime Achievement Ivor Novello award

Sadler’s Wells’ Associate Artist Nitin Sawhney picked up the lifetime achievement honour at the Ivor Novello awards earlier this month. The British musician, producer and composer was presented with the award, which is bestowed in recognition of exceptional creative talent, by actor and director Andy Serkis at the event on 18 May.

Speaking to Music Week magazine, Sawhney explained what the accolade means to him: “The Ivor Novello Awards are the awards that I respect the most, because it’s from composers and songwriters. I know how the board works, and they are all very accomplished and seasoned musicians and writes. From that point of view, it’s an incredible accolade. I’m very proud to get it.”

Sawhney may have received a lifetime achievement award, but he is definitely not one to rest on his laurels. Among the projects he is currently working on, he is co-devising a brand new dance production with dancer and choreographers Honji Wang and Sébastien Ramirez (Wang Ramirez). The production, which is being made to Sawhney’s acclaimed 2015 album Dystopian Dream, will premiere at Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg in September 2017 and receive its UK premiere at Sadler’s Wells in autumn 2018.

 

Image: Nitin Sawhney with his Lifetime Achievement award and its presenter Andy Serkis at the 62nd Ivor Novello Awards (2017). Photo: Mark Allan

Sadler’s Wells and Birmingham Royal Ballet launch Ballet Now

In association with Sadler’s Wells, Birmingham Royal Ballet has launched a new initiative to develop the choreographers, composers and designers of the future.

Ballet Now is a five-year programme of professional development, with BRB and Sadler’s Wells commissioning two works each year , supporting a total of six artists per year – one choreographer, composer and designer per commission. The commissions aim to support and champion artistic innovation, risk-taking and new choreographic practice.

Thanks to mentoring from BRB’s Artistic Director David Bintley, Koen Kessels, Music Director for BRB, and other experts in the dance industry, participating choreographers, composers and designers will have the opportunity to challenge their choreographic practice and develop creative collaborations for presentation on the large-scale, while gaining valuable skills in leading a creative process in a major ballet company.

Ballet Now’s launch coincided with the first meeting of the Creative Consortium, made up of David Bintley, Koen Kessels, Alistair Spalding (Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Sadler’s Wells), Cassa Pancho (Artistic Director, Ballet Black), Ted Brandsen (Director, Dutch National Ballet), Emma Southworth (Studio Programme Senior Producer, The Royal Ballet), Sally Beamish (Composer) and Sally Cavender (Director, Performance Music & Vice-Chairman, Faber Music). The first awarded commissions will be announced at Sadler’s Wells on 3 November 2017.

 

Image: Cinderella in rehearsal: David Bintley with Momoko Hirata and Jenna Roberts. Photo: Ty Singleton.

Meet Nora

We caught up with Eleanor Sikorski from Nora to find out more about the dancer-led initiative and what to expect from the much anticipated return of Nora Invites… in the Lilian Baylis on 1 and 2 June.

How did Nora come about?

Flora and I started Nora, essentially, so that we could do more dancing. We wanted to actively create situations in which we were working with choreographers and other artists that we loved in the studio: making, moving and performing. We were both at the end of a period of doing a lot of independent producing and curation, and we could see that in order to shift the nature of the work we were doing, from laptop to dance floor, we had to initiate something new and something big… or at least something that dramatically shifted our perception of our power as dancers. We also wanted to create a working model which could be robust enough to eventually involve more people, which we have done. Nora is now a trio! Stephanie McMann, Flora Wellesley Wesley and myself.

Nora is a dancer-led initiative. Do you generally approach choreographers yourselves, and what leads you to approaching particular choreographers/ dance artists?

Yes, we initiate everything. We have had a lot of help, guidance and support from others but we are quite strict about the fundamental decisions coming from us. It has always been important for us that Nora has the potential to take whatever shape we want it to, so we like to keep questioning what we are doing so that we don’t fall into any boxes without wanting to and we stay flexible to our and our collaborators’ needs. Each conversation with an artist starts a little differently, depending on if we know them well or not at all! The important things are that we love the work they make, that we believe they will engage with us as artists in the studio, that they are conscious of the power dynamics that Nora is trying to challenge and that they have an ethical approach to working… that might sound like a lot to ask, but there are plenty of people working like this!

Nora Invites is back after its run in 2015. Do you find the experience of performing the same pieces for 2 years has changed? Do you feel you have changed as individuals and as artists in that time?

We have changed a lot and the way we perform the show has really shifted. The main shift is that we have had time with the work and practice performing it so we feel much more confident and knowledgeable about what we are doing on stage. Stephanie (now co-artistic director with me and Flora) was our rehearsal director throughout the process of making the duets and her role has been key to us developing our relationship with the work – I think we have gone from being in awe of the work to feeling like we are the work, or, as dancers like to say, that we ‘own’ the work. I think our performances are better for it.

Nora Invites features three different pieces by three different creative teams with quite different moods. How do you adapt to the tone of each piece on the evening?

Liz Aggiss kept repeating a mantra to us throughout out her process which is, ‘The King is Dead! Long live the King!’. Essentially this just means drop it and move on. Next, next, next! She taught us this mantra in relation to what we do within her piece, but it is actually really useful for performing the whole evening and being able to leave each piece behind and move onto the next. The first time Simon Tanguy saw us performing the other duets he came backstage and said something along the lines of, ‘breathe, slow down and think floppy’. He saw that we needed to chill out before we could do his piece well. It’s not necessarily hard to get in to each new piece, it’s more difficult to get out of the previous one. You have to learn to drop it quickly, to shake off the residue and start again from nothing. We have very different relationships with all of the artists, so I find it is useful to just imagine each of them before we perform their work, and their imagined presence helps me to get in the right mood!

How involved have you been in the creative processes behind each piece? Does it differ piece to piece?

Each piece had a very different process. Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion gave us a musical score and set us the task of creating movement to the written rhythm. They essentially left us with it for six months, dropping in and out of the studio to support and direct us. Their handing over of the score was key to the concept of the work.

Simon Tanguy worked with us in the studio for about a month, spread out over the course of a year. He directed us through many improvisation scores and then we slowly wrote a script together. When we had learnt the script he set it in space – creating a choreography which supported and moulded the words in very particular ways and working with our lighting designer, Seth Rook-Williams, to create the right landscape.

Liz Aggiss choreographed the work and then taught it to us, giving us very clear direction in order to create her precise vision. During the process of teaching us the composition she made adjustments as she saw us embody her ideas and as she got to know us better as people and performers. She was amazingly quick and sharp in how she composed her ideas around us as we worked.

You’ll also be here the week after Nora Invites, with Nora Talks, where you’ll be discussing your thoughts after a period of research. Do you think this research informs or changes the way you perform, particularly in Nora Invites?

Yes, the talk will be one of a series in which we reflect on our curatorial research and we invite people to respond with their own ideas and thoughts. Our relationship to Nora Invites is constantly shifting, as time passes, and this research feels like a continuation of this shift – a bit like a natural evolution. Having performed the work a lot I think we now feel more reflective, and we have begun to think about what might happen next; this is essentially how our research started! Our research is also closely connected to our changing relationship with each other: the experience that Flora and I have performing together over a long period of time, and our relationship with Stephanie as rehearsal director and now as co-artistic director/performer. We have discovered a lot about each other, about how things can work and be different to how they appear or what one might imagine. We are very happy with what we have managed to do, so it feels important to share it and invite others to see it. Through being transparent we hope to continue questioning how performance can be made and how dancers can engage directly and practically with artistic practice and intention.

I’m not sure our research has directly affected how we perform, but the fact that we are doing the research is because our relationship to performing has changed! Maybe…

What’s next for Nora?

After our series of Nora Talks we are planning to curate a new programme of work for the three of us to perform. This curation process has begun already and it has been a fascinating and ever-changing ride. We are still keeping very open to what this could be – maybe something similar to Nora Invites, or maybe something wildly different. We will see!

Click here to find out more about Nora Invites.

 

Image: Flora Wellesley Wesley and Eleanor Sikorski in BLOODY NORA! Photo: Camilla Greenwell.

Award-winning Betroffenheit at Sadler’s Wells broadcast on BBC4

Sadler’s Wells’ co-production Betroffenheit, created by Associate Artist Crystal Pite and author and actor Jonathon Young, will be broadcast on BBC4 this Sunday 7 May at 9pm.

Described as “an astonishingly ambitious, brilliantly realised, tender-hearted meditation on the nature of bereavement, grief, and the coping strategies of the mind”, the production is a sensitively and exceptionally crafted mix of choreography and theatre that investigates the state of shock, speechlessness and confusion experienced by an individual following traumatic events.

As well as having authored the script, Young performs in the central role, for which he won the Outstanding Performance in Modern Dance award at the 2016 Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards. Pite’s choreography demonstrates her absolute command of the dance-making territory at the intersection between narrative and abstraction.

The work received plaudits from critics and public alike during its two successful runs at Sadler’s Wells, and in April won the 2017 Olivier award for best new dance production. Betroffenheit is an extraordinary and affecting work – watch it on BBC4 on 7 May, or catch the production on iPlayer for the 30 days after the broadcast.

 

Image: Betroffenheit. Photo: Micheal Slobodian.