Press Release: Sadler's Wells - Wild Card: Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome

[Jan McNulty]

UK PREMIERE 
WILD CARD: Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome
Lilian Baylis Studio, EC1R 4TN 
Thursday 14 & Friday 15 November 
Performances at 8pm  
Ticket price £17
Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com

 

Sadler’s Wells Wild Card returns with a bespoke evening curated by British-Chilean choreographer and dance artist Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome on Thursday 14 & Friday 15 November in a UK Premiere. 

Muñoz-Newsome’s evening is an invitation to interact with INCHOATE BUZZ, a new immersive work. Created together with visual artist India Harvey and sound artist Josh Anio Grigg, it offers an environment to explore, inviting us into a sensorial journey in a relaxed set of soft objects, projections and suspended sculpture.Intimacy, proximity and distance are all at play.

For this version of INCHOATE BUZZ, several guest artists perform their own works within its welcoming environment: dance artists Last Yearz Interesting Negro (Jamila Johnson-Small), Rukeya, Eve Stainton, and musicians Kiera Coward Deyell (Black Obsidian Sound System) and Isabel Muñoz-Newsome (Pumarosa).

Eva Martinez, Sadler’s Wells’ Artistic Programmer said “It is such a privilege to witness an artist’s vision unfold during our work on Wild Cards. Fernanda’s naturally instinctive curation is bringing to life a unique sensory experience. I see it arising from the perspective of her lived experience as a dancer, tapping into that specific ability to be in touch with different levels of realities at once, and making these visible to us. At the cross roads of the installation, the live performance and the group mediation, the evening promises to be call to a different set of actions: deep listening, resting, slowing down. An invitation to use more of our senses to interact with the world.”

The development of INCHOATE BUZZ is supported by a DanceXchange Choreography Award, a Jerwood New Work Fund grant from Jerwood Arts and though public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome’s work is produced by Nikki Tomlinson.

 

Listing information:

UK Premiere
WILD CARD: Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome
Lilian Baylis Studio, EC1R 4TN           
Performances at 8pm
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.

 

Its vision is to reflect and respond to the world through dance: enabling artists of all backgrounds to create dance that moves us and opens our minds, and sharing those experiences with the widest possible audiences – to enrich their lives and deepen their understanding of what it means to be human.

 

Audiences of over half a million come to Sadler’s Wells’ three 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 dance than any other theatre in the world, embracing the popular and the unknown. Since 2005, it has helped to bring over 170 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. 

 

Sadler’s Wells nurtures the next generation of talent through a number of artist development initiatives and reaches over 30,000 annually through its learning and engagement programmes.

 

Located in Islington, north London, Sadler’s Wells’ 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.

Sadler’s Wells is to open an additional mid-scale venue in east London in 2022. The new space will be at the heart of the East Bank project, a new cultural and education district in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, which will also include BBC, UAL’s London College of Fashion, UCL and the V&A in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution. As well as a 550-seat auditorium, Sadler’s Wells’ new venue will include a choreographic centre and a hip-hop theatre academy, the first of their kind in the world to be run by a theatre.

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 opens the stage 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 FERNANDA MUÑOZ-NEWSOME 
Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome’s practice involves dancing / voicing as political gesture, presenting in institutions, alternative spaces and clubs. She is interested in creating work which shifts perspectives, crafting queer spaces where care and consent promote exploration and agency. Working with pop/punk bands, she has presented and performed at E-Werk Luckenwalde, ICA, Barbican, Siobhan Davies Dance Studios, South London Gallery, TATE, Store X, DRAF, Oval Space, Block Universe, Art Night, Palais de Tokyo, Chisenhale Dance Space, Chisenhale Gallery, Calvert Foundation, Royal Academy, Arnolfini and Whitechapel Gallery.
 

ABOUT COLLABORATING ARTISTS
India Harvey is an artist and researcher whose work explores the possibilities of having multiple, distinct & complex relationships with the texture of our lived environments. India often collaborates with others, working in interdisciplinary and cross-generational contexts, foregrounding sensorial listening and agitating against ocular-centrism. India is currently working on projects with the Barbican Centre, Tate Modern, and a forthcoming residency at MKAC. India has created the set or ‘environment’ for INCHOATE BUZZ.

Sound and new media artist Josh Anio Grigg has designed and collaborated on shows at the National Theatre, the Yard and the ICA among others, as well as at festivals across Europe. Josh has created the sound and projection design for INCHOATE BUZZ.

Kiera Coward Deyell is a sound engineer and designer. She has designed, installed and performed sound in spaces across the U.K. and is one of the founding members of Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.). Taking inspiration from ecological systems, urban isolation and displacement, Coward Deyell’s work speaks of nostalgia to those for whom precarity has always felt like home.

Last Yearz Interesting Negro is the performance project of artist/dancer Jamila Johnson-Small. Their practice is relational, moving across spaces, contexts, roles and collaborations and working through questions of entanglement, alienation and sensation.

“It’s low rumbling unruly states and navigating control internal external outside inside city streets and parks and bodies of water what is done and doing to you, to us, to me, for us, for you, for me. psychic landscapes laid out and all that tangled up complicity doing and done”

Eve Stainton’s practice spans movement, performance making and digital collage and is anchored by the complexities of un-codeable, poetic queer encounters. Interested in exploiting her/their own desires and vulnerabilities, for INCHOATE BUZZ Eve will be working with this personal provocation: How to be polyamorous with the dances she/they are offering.

Isabel Munoz-Newsome works across visual art, writing, music and performance and draws on themes related to female empowerment, sexuality and rupture. Her band Pumarosa have just released their second album with Fiction Records. With their first album, The Witch, they toured Europe, America, Asia and Australia.

For this event, Isabel is taking the opportunity to explore new ground.  Responding to the intimate and liquid atmosphere of INCHOATE BUZZ, she will shake off some of the structure and control often associated with songwriting, instead looking to chance using samples, loops and drones. She will be working primarily with her voice and some recorded and synthetic sounds.

Rukeya is a dancer and performance artist. Her work explores trans embodiment, rituals for survival and healing practices. Recent work has been presented at DIY Space, Supernormal Festival, Trans Pride Brighton, The Yard Theatre, Steakhouse Live, Chisenhale Dance and The Stedelijk Museum. Rukeya will contribute research & practice from her previous dance works, 'Nothing 2 Nobody' & 'Brown Handbag' which explore islamic rituals, the familial, self-defence, grieving processes and resistance dances.