Press Release: Dance work inspired by Mozart’s final and unfinished work comes to Sadler's Wells in March

[Jan McNulty]

UK PREMIERE                                                    
Fabrizio Cassol & Alain Platel
Requiem pour L.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1R 4TN
Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 March
Performances: Tues & Weds at 7.30pm
Tickets: £20
Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com

Unclassifiable Alain Platel, the trailblazing founder and director of Belgian contemporary dance collective les ballets C de la B, returns to Sadler’s Wells, alongside regular collaborator, composer and musical director Fabrizio Cassol, for the UK premiere of Requiem pour L.on Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 March. 

Cassol and Platel have previously collaborated on vsprs (inspired by Monteverdi’s Vespers for the Blessed Virgin Vespers), pitié! (inspired by Bach’s St Matthew Passion) and the western baroque repertoire Coup Fatal. Each of these works have blended the music and movement of different cultures and for Requiem pour L. they continue to explore the idea of métissage. 

Inspired by Mozart’s final and unfinished work following his premature death at 35, which was then completed at the request of Mozart’s widow, Constanza, by Mozart’s pupil, Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Cassol has removed the historical additions and reconstructed the Requiem, with 14 musicians from different continents, to fill in the gaps with new musical material that originates from different cultures, using diverse musical influences from popular African music to jazz and opera. 

The theme of death has always featured significantly in Platel’s work, but never before has it been so central. Following the death of Platel’s father, dog and his mentor, Gerard Mortier, Platel found something happened that transcended the overwhelming grief, which he aims to show and share with the audience in Requiem pour L.. Platel uses the imagery that Mozart’s music conjures up, from the requiem mass to the mass grave into which Mozart himself was dumped, to build a visual world of death and ritual for the musicians and dancers to inhabit.  

Pre-show Director’s Conversation: Tuesday 20 March at 6pm, Alistair Spalding in conversation with Fabrizio Cassol and Alain Platel; £7.50 or £4 in conjunction with a ticket to see the production that evening.

Listing information:
UK PREMIERE                                                   
Fabrizio Cassol & Alain Platel                                                                                                          
Requiem pour L.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1R 4TN
Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 March
Performances: Tues & Weds at 7.30pm
Ticket prices: £20
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, its goal is to motivate everyone to experience dance – to take part, learn, experiment and be inspired. Audiences of over half a million come to Sadler’s Wells’ London theatres each year, with many more enjoying its touring productions at partner venues across the UK and around the world, or accessing its content through digital channels. 

Sadler’s Wells commissions 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 140 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 its artist development initiatives, and reaches over 25,000 annually through its learning and engagement programmes.

Located in Islington, north London, the current theatre is the sixth to have stood on the site since it was first built by entrepreneur Richard Sadler 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. Sadler’s Wells is a charity and a National Portfolio Organisation, currently receiving 10% of its revenue from Arts Council England.

www.sadlerswells.com

ABOUT ALAIN PLATEL
Alain Platel is trained as a remedial educationalist, and is an autodidact director. In 1984 he set up a small group with a number of friends and relatives to work collectively. Emma (1988) signalled his concentration on directing. He was responsible for Bonjour Madame (1993), La Tristeza Complice (1995) and Iets op Bach(1998), with which les ballets C de la B (as the group was now called) rocketed to the international top. In the meantime his collaboration with Arne Sierens had a similar effect on the Ghent youth theatre company Victoria, with the three plays Moeder en Kind (1995), Bernadetje (1996) and Allemaal Indiaan (1999).

After Allemaal Indiaan he announced that he was stopping making productions. But shortly afterwards Gerard Mortier persuaded him to do Wolf (2003) based on Mozart for the Ruhrtriennale. The choir project for the opening of the new KVS marked the start of close collaboration with the composer Fabrizio Cassol. vsprs(2006) proved to be a turning point in his career. So far his work had been exuberant in both the diversity of performers and the themes, but now it became more profound and intense and revealed a world of passion and desire. And violence, as in Nine Finger (2007) with Benjamin Verdonck and Fumiyo Ikeda.

After the baroque pitié! (2008), Out Of Context – for Pina (January 2010) is an almost ascetic reflection of the movement repertoire of spasms and tics. Platel consistently continues to search this language of movement for incarnations of feelings that are too vast. The yearning for something transcending the individual is becoming more and more palpable.

In collaboration with director Frank Van Laecke, he created Gardenia (June 2010), a production in which the closing of a transvestite cabaret affords us a glimpse into the private lives of a memorable group of old artists.In 2015 Alain Platel and Frank Van Laecke renewed their collaboration, this time joined by composer Steven Prengels, for En avant, marche ! a performance about a society inspired by the tradition of fanfare orchestras and brass bands.

C(H)ŒURS (2012), so far Platel’s biggest project, was commissioned by opera director Gerard Mortier. He got to work with the famous choral scenes from Verdi’s operas, later on he added pieces of music from Richard Wagner’s works. In C(H)ŒURS he examines –together with his dancers and the Teatro Real choir – how ‘dangerously beautiful’ a group can be. The political connotation in performances such as tauberbach (2014) and Coup Fatal (in collaboration with Fabrizio Cassol 2014) lies in the joie de vivre and energy that is displayed on stage to show how people sometimes live or even survive in undignified circumstances (a landfill in tauberbach and the real living conditions of the musicians from Congo in Coup Fatal). “Lust for life” as a way of rebellion.

In the recent past, Platel worked on small projects such as Nachtschade (for Victoria in 2006) and coaching work for amongst others Pieter and Jakob Ampe and their production Jake & Pete’s big reconciliation attempt for the disputes form the past (in 2011). Two projects which have had a significant influence on his way of perceiving theatre.

He also entered the arena of the dance film together with the British director Sophie Fiennes (Because I Sing in 2001, Ramallah!Ramallah!Ramallah! in 2005 and VSPRS Show and Tell in 2007) and solo with de balletten en ci en là (2006), an impressive view of what goes on in a twenty-year-old dance company, taking us all the way to Vietnam and Burkina Faso, but also and mainly being an ode to his home town Ghent.

ABOUT FABRIZIO CASSOL
For twenty years, he has been the composer and saxophonist of the band Aka Moon.

He has often worked with choreographers such as Alain Platel (les ballets C de la B – vsprs, pitié!, Coup Fatal), Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Rosas),  the Samoan Lemi Ponifasio (Mao Company), the Congolese Faustin Linye (studio Kaboka). In opera, he worked with Philippe Boesman-Luc Bondy, in theatre with Tg Stan.

His close collaboration with KVS, the Flemish Royal Theatre, led by Jan Goossens, was followed by an artistic residence in the opera De Munt La Monnaie (Brussels) led by Bernard Foccroulle.

Since 2012, he has been artist in residence at the Fondation de l'Abbaye Royaumont near Paris to continue studying world cultures, his latest creation being AlefBa with musicians from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey.

His particular interest in non-European music started after a trip to the Aka pygmies in Central Africa in 1992 and expanded to Asia (especially India) and Africa where he worked with the diva from Mali Oumou Sangare, the Griot Baba Sissoko and the Black Machine, the Indian master of percussion U. K. Sivaraman and the Senegalese Doudou N'Diaye Rose. As for the improvised music scene, he worked with Marc Turner, Robin Eubanks, David Gilmore, Magic Malik, Marc Ducret and Joe Lovano.

Together with DJ Grazzhoppa, he created the first big band with 14 DJs and participated in the concept of the aulochrome, a new polyphonic and chromatic woodwind instrument built by François Louis. 

He passes on his extensive knowledge of music from oral and written traditions, of chamber music or symphonic work in workshops and master classes all over the world, such as: at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris, the Royal Academy in London, the Conservatory in Jerusalem, in Alger, Beijing, Berlin, Chennai, Tunis and Royaumont.