contemporary ballet

Full Programme Announced for Natalia Osipova’s Pure Dance

Multi-award-winning superstar ballerina Natalia Osipova returns to Sadler’s Wells with a new production and world premiere, from Wednesday 12 to Sunday 16 September, featuring four new works.

A Sadler’s Wells production co-produced with New York City Center, Pure Dance is a handpicked programme of dance works exploring both contemporary and classical ballet repertoire.

The eclectic programme includes an original solo for Osipova created by Yuka Oishi whose previous work Renku, choreographed with Orkan Dann, won the Rolf Mares Prize for Outstanding Creation of the Year in 2012.

Special guest, American Ballet Theatre Principal David Hallberg, joins Osipova in two duets over the course of the evening. These include a pas de deux from Antony Tudor’s The Leaves Are Fading, one of the last works by the British choreographer, as well as a new commission by Alexei Ratmansky, artist in residence at American Ballet Theatre, former director of the Bolshoi Ballet and former MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

Hallberg will also appear in a new solo, choreographed by Kim Brandstrup, the Olivier Award-winning creator of Rambert’s Transfigured Night and Life is a Dream.

Natalia Osipova in rehearsal with David Hallberg in New York Photo Credit: Stephanie Berger.

Dancers Jason Kittelberger and Jonathan Goddard complete the company. Kittelberger, who performed alongside Osipova in her programme for Sadler’s Wells in 2016, appears in Israeli choreographer Roy Assaf’s Six Years Later. The duet reveals a couple who find each other after a long separation, performed to Beethoven and Arvo Pärt. Goddard joins Osipova in Flutter, an exciting new work by Iván Pérez, who has created work for Ballet Moscow, Compañía Nacional de Danza and Balletboyz. In 2016, a feature film of Pérez’s work for Balletboyz, Young Men, received a Rose D’Or and a Golden Prague award.