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Press Release: Sadler's Wells - Wild Card returns with fools, participation, dark comedy and dance in June


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Wild Card: Stefan Jovanović 

Constellations

Lilian Baylis Studio, EC1R 4TN 

Thursday 6 & Friday 7 June 

Performances at 8pm

Pre-show activities from 7pm 

Tickets: £17

Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com

 

Dance theatre maker Stefan Jovanović presents the latest bespoke Wild Card offering with Constellations, an atmospheric evening of rituals, dark comedy and dance at the Lilian Baylis Studio on Thursday 6 and Friday 7 June. Wild Card is an increasingly popular Sadler’s Wells initiative, presenting unique evenings curated by a new generation of dance-makers since 2013.

 

Constellations explores the relationship between power and gender through an eclectic series of vignettes, featuring historically marginal archetypes of witches, fools and prophets. Summoning stereotypes from Western culture, Constellations includes a dance piece called Radical Togetherness, which investigates the generating of new forms of audience-performer relationship, situated at the threshold of a travelling circus, ballroom and phantasmagorical pop club. Gender fluidity and social dancing are invoked to examine new ways of understanding social politics – specifically how to be together in a common physical and emotional space.

 

Jovanović, originally trained in architecture, makes his first foray into dance after immersing himself into different performative practices over the last six years, including participating in Sadler’s Wells Summer University (2015-2018). Constellations builds on his singular sensibility and perspective, enabling him to question what brings us together in the theatre in a unique way.  

 

A distinctive coven of dancers, performers, multimedia artists, architects and practicing healers host the evening. Collaborators include dancers Pau Aran Gimeno (Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch), Katye Coe, Roni Katz and Sara Ruddock, filmmaker Charlie Cattrall, composer Domenico Angarano and singer-songwriter Bliss Carmxn. Also part of the congregation is mask-maker Damselfrau, lighting designer Patrick Morris, playground set designer Jack Hardy, make-up artist Hamilton Stansfield and fashion couturier Curtis Oland.

 

Performers directly engage the audience to reconsider the idea of who in society holds marginal and dominant roles, and why. Constellations challenges conventional dance-forms and their gendered stereotypes in an inviting and thoughtful manner, through a rich palette of movement, song, drag and symbolism. 

 

Contains nudity and strong language

Research and development supported by Sadler’s Wells, Siobhan Davies Dance, and Arts Council England.

Pre-show activities: Thursday 6 & Friday 7 June from 7pm

 

-ENDS-

 

Listing information:

Wild Card: Stefan Jovanović 

Constellations

Lilian Baylis Studio, EC1R 4TN 

Thursday 6 & Friday 7 June 

Performances at 8pm 

Pre-show activities from 7pm

Tickets: £17

Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com

 

Notes to Editors

 

ABOUT SADLER’S WELLS

Sadler's Wells is a world-leading creative organisation dedicated to dance in all its forms. With over three centuries of theatrical heritage and a year-round programme of performances and learning activities, it is the place where artists come together to create dance, and where people of all backgrounds come to experience it – to take part, learn, experiment and be inspired.

 

Audiences of over half a million come to its London theatres each year, with many more enjoying its touring productions at venues across the UK and around the world, and accessing its content through digital channels.

Sadler's Wells commissions, produces and presents more new dance work than any other theatre in the world, embracing the popular and the unknown. Since 2005, it has helped to bring over 160 new dance works to the stage, many of them involving its 16 Associate Artists, three Resident Companies and four Associate Companies – the most exciting talents working in dance today.

 

It also nurtures the next generation of talent through research and development, running the National Youth Dance Company and a range of programmes including Wild Card, New Wave Associates, Open Art Surgery and Summer University. Sadler's Wells' learning and engagement activities reach over 25,000 annually through programmes that take dance out into the community and invite communities into the theatre. Projects include community productions and the renowned Company of Elders, its resident over-60s performance group, while events range from pre and post-show talks with dance artists to classes, workshops and assisted performances.

 

Located in Islington, north London, the current building is the sixth to have stood on site since entrepreneur Richard Sadler first established the theatre in 1683. The venue has played an illustrious role in the history of theatre ever since, with The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and English National Opera having all started at Sadler's Wells.

www.sadlerswells.com

 

ABOUT WILD CARD  

Wild Card is a unique initiative providing a glimpse of the rich variety of work that makes up the current dance landscape. Increasingly popular with audiences and artists alike, Wild Card evenings opens the Lilian Baylis Studio up to an exciting and adventurous community of dance-makers, giving a broad range of artists the unique opportunity to curate their own programmes of dance. These specially curated evenings feature exploratory approaches to choreography and combine different mediums, broadening audiences’ perspectives on dance made today.  

Wild Card is part of Sadler’s Wells’ programme of support for young and emerging dance talent, alongside other initiatives including the New Wave Associates programme, Sadler’s Wells Summer University and hosting the National Youth Dance Company. 

 

ABOUT STEFAN JOVANOVIĆ

Stefan Jovanović is a Serbo-Italian dance-theatre-maker, architectural designer and storyteller working at the boundary between performance and ceremony. Through these developing streams of practice, Jovanović approaches dance as an intersecting artistic form, rooted with a deep interest in the body. He trains in body-based practices, including Somatic Experiencing trauma-therapy and Systemic Family Constellations. Jovanović has also graduated from Sadler's Wells Summer University (2015-2018). 

 

Jovanović trained at the Architectural Assocation School of Architecture in London between 2010 and 2017. Between 2011 and 2012, he worked as the architectural designer of Pret a Diner to create temporary social and dining experiences, featured in Art Basel, Berlinale and Frieze London. In 2013 he collaborated with artist Peter Macapia, on a series of filmic scores to map the relationship of geo-political tension and ruin cracks in the edifices of Manhattan. A resident dance-artist in the 2014 What Now? Festival produced by Independent Dance at Siobhan Davies Studios, Jovanović went on to create dance pieces, Les Traces du Serpent (2015) for the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi, France and Le Corps Écrivain for the Goya Museum in Castres, France. He also performed in Boris Charmatz’’s If Tate Modern were Musée de la Danse? (2015), and received the danceWEB scholarship in 2016. In 2017, he launched a performance-series in London, called Velvet Fools, exploring ceremonial dance as a practice for healing. He has previously collaborated with acclaimed dance artist Meg Stuart, performance maker Jen Rosenblit and Tanztheater Wuppertal. He is currently the dramaturge for Jonathan Burrows, Matteo & Francesca Fargion's Music for Lectures Series and co-creator of Blackbird, a dance work in collaboration with dance artist Katye Coe and film maker Charlie Cattrall. His current research looks at the translation of systemic family constellations and somatic experiencing into dance and architecture.

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