Press Release: Joss Arnott Dance & Evelyn Glennie - UK Tour 2015

[Jan McNulty]

Josh Arnott Dance and Evelyn Glennie - UK Tour 2015

 

 

Joss Arnott Dance and Dame Evelyn Glennie join forces for 5|0 - a birthday celebration marking the company’s 5^th and Dame Evelyn’s 50^th 

 

The 9-venue autumn 2015 tour kicks-off with the world premiere at DanceEast, Ipswich on 16 October and concludes at Wiltshire Music Centre on 21 November.

 

Joss Arnott Dance presents a triple bill of new, powerful and heart-pounding choreography, performed by the company’s trademark all-female cast and accompanied by live performance by GRAMMY award-winner and 2015 Polar Music Prize laureate Dame Evelyn Glennie. Created by Artistic Director Joss Arnott, 5|0, a new triple bill, demonstrates why the company has emerged as one of the most exciting voices in British contemporary dance.

 

5|0 is a birthday celebration marking Joss Arnott Dance’s 5^th_,and Dame Evelyn’s 50^th birthdays. In a unique collaboration, James Keane, Joss Arnott Dance’s Composer and Glennie have together created a thundering percussive score - which she will perform live onstage - for the climax of the triple bill – Wide Awakening, created by Joss Arnott for five female dancers.

 

Talking about how the 5|0 celebration came about, Joss Arnott said “I was keen to do something special to mark my company's fifth anniversary. I had choreographed a piece to one of Evelyn Glennie’s tracks for my A-Levels and had always wanted to work with her. So I emailed her office, and they emailed straight back and said come for a visit! So, together with my regular composer James Keane we met Evelyn and I think she was was immediately impressed by our artistic ambition and vision.”

 

For me, the link between dance and music is intrinsic, and it's the driving force behind my movement style – and I choose dancers who can embody that ideal. I can always tell what makes a musical dancer. You almost see the music; it's not two separate things. You hear it, you feel it, you see it."

 

Dame Evelyn added “I liked the fact that Joss specialises in the female form. His collaboration with James was also interesting to me, so I knew that musically we would be in good hands. Working with dancers is challenging, it pushes my boundaries. The way you feed off the dancers and their energy, and the way they feed off the music, you realise you are part of a collage. And I love how dancers use space, how they musically use space, so that you can almost hear the sound of the movement.”

 

James Keane also talked about the collaborative process “For Wide Awakening Evelyn and I went into the studio and started to explore sound palettes with different instruments, experimenting with mixing live and synthesised sounds. 

 

The inspiration for the music comes from Joss’ choreography which tends to be very powerful, very physical, so it's choreography that can withstand very powerful music. And although there’s a lot of very delicate metal and some very beautiful marimba, the music is about rhythm, drive and complexity. But it’s also about space – there has to be space, because the first ten minutes will hopefully make the audience’s brains melt."

 

The triple bill also features 24, a quartet inspired by the themes and concepts within the recent Alexander McQueen V&A exhibition Savage Beauty and a solo, V.

 

Autumn 2015 Tour

Date                      Venue                                                                                                  Box Office

16 & 17 Oct         DanceEast, Ipswich                                                                         01473 295230

22 Oct                   Riverfront, Newport                                                                       01633 656757

24 Oct                   Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester                    0161 907 5200

29 Oct                   Pavilion Dance South West, Bournemouth                           01202 203630                     

2 Nov                    The Hawth, Crawley                                                                       01293 553636

3 Nov                    artsdepot, London                                                                          0208 369 5454

13 & 14 Nov        Dance City, Newcastle                                                                   0191 261 0505

19 Nov                  Grand Theatre, Blackpool                                                             01253 290190                                     

21 Nov                  Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford-on-Avon                          01225 860100

 

5|0 is a co-commission between Blackpool Grand, DanceEast, Swindon Dance, Pavilion Dance, South East Dance, CAST and developed with Dance City. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England and PRS for Music Foundation.

 

Joss Arnott Dance is an internationally touring, cutting edge contemporary dance company based in Yorkshire; North of England led by Artistic Director Joss Arnott. The company’s productions aim to excite and inspire its audiences regardless of their dance experience and knowledge through Arnott’s dynamic choreography, originally composed music and extraordinary dancers.

 

 

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Joss Arnott trained at London Studio Centre and LABAN. Upon graduation he joined Transitions Dance Company whilst completing his MA in Dance Performance. Joss has toured internationally as a dance artist and has worked with Cameron McMillan, Colin Poole, Tom Dale, Matthias Sperling, Yael Flexer and The Barbican on an installation for the Merce Cunningham Company.

Founding Joss Arnott Dance shortly after his training, Joss has been continuously supported and commissioned by leading UK dance agencies and venues whilst working at dance conservatoires such as Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, Laban, The Place and Northern School of Contemporary Dance.

Joss is a Focus Group Artist for Sadler’s Wells National Youth Dance Company and has produced multiple works for National CAT Schemes – including those at DanceEast and Swindon Dance as well as teaching at Laban and The Lowry. Other Youth commissions include those for professional dance companies such as 2Faced Dance Company. Joss also teaches professional class, intensives and residencies regularly up and down the country.

Working with producer Phil Hargreaves over the past five years has resulted in the continuous success and achievements the company have had to date with exciting future projects in place. In the last four years, Joss has received four Grants for the Arts awards from Arts Council England for Joss Arnott Dance, allowing the company to excel and for Joss to be acknowledged as one of the UK’s leading emerging contemporary dance choreographers.

Dame Evelyn Glennie is the first person in history to successfully create and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist, performing worldwide with the greatest conductors, orchestras, and artists. She fondly recalls having played the first percussion concerto in the history of The Proms at the Albert Hall in 1992, which paved the way for orchestras around the world to feature percussion concerti. She had the honour of a leading role in the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

 

Evelyn regularly provides masterclasses and consultations designed to guide the next generation. She is also a leading commissioner of new works for solo percussion, Evelyn has more than 170 pieces to her name from many of the world’s most eminent composers. The film ‘Touch the Sound’ and her enlightening TED speech remain key testimonies to her approach to sound-creation.

 

To this day, Evelyn continues to invest in realising her vision – to Teach the World to Listen – while looking to open a centre that embodies her mission: “to improve communication and social cohesion by encouraging everyone to discover new ways of listening. We want to inspire, to create, to engage and to empower”.

 

James Keane – Composer. Trained at Trinity College of Music, James has composed for dance, theatre, TV, animation and the concert hall and has conducted music for opera, concerts, TV, films, and CDs.

 

As a performer he has worked with Deborah Warner (LIFT), Tom Morris (NT, BAC), Struan Leslie (NT, WNO), Melly Still (Lyric Hammersmith), Jonathan Stone (Purcell Room and touring), Julian Crouch, Lizzi Kew-Ross (Laban), Simon Fisher Turner and as a conductor/orchestrator/instrumentalist with The Clod Ensemble, The Cholmondeleys and Featherstonehaughs, Welsh National Opera, Ballet Rambert, Hofesh Shechter and composers Murray Gold (BBC, C4), John Browne (ROH), Paul Clark (NT) and bands The Jazz Cigarettes (live karaoke), The Blue Dogs and Heist (supporting The Fall).

 

Most recently he has been conducting a choir at Tate Modern Turbine Hall in Clod Ensemble’s ‘Silver Swan’, also conducting a string orchestra and playing fuzz bass in Clod’s ‘An Anatomie in Four Quarters’ at Sadler’s Wells and Wales Millennium Centre; touring internationally with Hofesh Shechter Company as MD, Guitarist and Drummer; performing in Without Warning company; composing for Lost Dog (Place Prize winners 2012), Theo Clinkard, The Circus Space, Struan Leslie and Joss Arnott Dance – including a version of ‘Threshold’ for 3 live drum kits. In 2011 his piece ‘21Strings’ was performed at the Bonnie Bird Theatre, conducted by Nick Pendlebury, with choreography by Lizzi Kew-Ross. He was associate Musical Director for the world premiere of ‘Here All Night’, words by Samuel Beckett, music by Paul Clark at the Brighton Festival 2013 and was musician in residence for the 2014 Festival Parade.

 

He is currently working on a piece for Lizzi Kew-Ross for string quartet and dancers inspired by the work of Edmund De Waal, a recreation of two Rudolf Laban pieces with composer Oli Newman and choreographer Alison Curtis-Jones and a new commission from the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch with choreographer Theo Clinkard.