Press Release: Sadler's Wells - Joe Moran Presents Arrangement, 28 & 29 November

[Jan McNulty]

 

 

 

Joe Moran / Dance Art Foundation
Arrangement 
Lilian Baylis Studio, EC1R 4TN 
Thursday 28 November & Friday 29 November at 8pm
Tickets: £17 
Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com

 

British-Irish choreographer Joe Moran and Dance Art Foundation presents Arrangement in the Lilian Baylis Studio at Sadler’s Wells on Thursday 28 November and Friday 29 November. 

Arrangement premiered in 2014 at The Place in London and then toured extensively across the UK as part of Joe Moran’s first national tour Assembly. Arrangement offers a bold and refreshing examination of gender, masculinity and the male body, questioning and unsettling representations of men and masculinity in dance.

Arrangement is a full-evening work performed by an international cast of six exceptional dancers, Andrew Hardwidge (Ligia Lewis, Tino Seghal), Samir Kennedy (Lucy McCormick, Pablo Bronstien), Erik Nevin (Hussein Chalayan, Damien Jalet), Christopher Owen (Boris Charmatz, CandoCo, Scottish Dance Theatre), Alexander Standard (Daniel Linehan, Yuval Pick), and Yiannis Tsigkris (Greek National Opera School of Dance). 

Arrangement continues Moran’s collaboration with lighting designer Beky Stoddart (DV8, Michael Clark), and costume designer Tom Rogers (Rambert, Philadelphia Opera).

Celebrated female dancer Temipote Ajose-Cutting (Punchdrunk, Protein) opens the evening in a new adaptation of Moran’s compelling solo Decommission, a lively experiment in intimacy and risk.

Joe Moran’s previous work at Sadler’s Wells includes On The Habit of Being Oneself, which premiered in September 2017 and the durational duet Singular, which was performed in the theatre’s public spaces as part of Sampled earlier this year. Moran is also a Sadler’s Wells Summer University graduate (2015-2018), a pioneering development programme for dance artists.

Joe Moran, Artistic Director of Dance Art Foundation, said: “This is the first time I have been invited by a major institution to re-stage a work and I am excited to revisit Arrangement five years after its creation with its full original cast. Arrangement was conceived in a defiant spirit of reaction to a proliferation of all-male dance works. I was repeatedly seeing work preoccupied with stereotypes of highly-charged and overblown masculinity – men were tough, aggressive, physical, dangerous. All physical intimacy was framed as competitive or combative. It was so tedious and alienating: so drenched in heteronormative, misogynist and homo/transphobic anxiety. It felt as if advances in sexual politics had suddenly never happened. 

“Problematic masculinity is infinitely more nameable today but also hasn’t gone anywhere, so there are new resonances returning to this work and I am keen to foreground its queer choreographic manoeuvres that critique masculinity by looking beyond gender binary. In re-staging the work, there is however a glaring and somewhat paradoxical issue that although Arrangement is an insistent critique of masculinity, it still only employs cis male dancers. And whilst, in my view, groups of men on dance stages that refuse happy heteronormative representation still crackle with disquiet, this is a material reality on which I felt I could not in good conscience proceed. So as very partial and imperfect gestures, I am commissioning critical writing by female-identifying and/or non-binary voices to accompany the performances and opening the evening with the stripped back solo Decommission performed for the first time by the exceptional dancer Temipote Ajose-Cutting. I hope the combination of thoughts, action and determination will combine to make a thought-provoking event.”

Eva Martinez, Sadler’s Wells’ Artistic Programmer said: “It is a pleasure to further our relationship with Joe Moran and offer the opportunity for London audiences to follow the choreographic journey of this most intelligent and articulate dance artist. For independent makers, revisiting a work at a different time to that of its creation is a rarity, as they often find themselves pushing forward with the next work, constant production being a key driver in any arts market. It feels therefore significant, as we grow our curatorial dialogue with artists and audiences, to at times counteract this logic and return to work that is significant as the political context changes. This is the case for Arrangement, a rather personal work which is revisited in the context of a heightened questioning of gender, gender-representation and gender-identification, a discourse finding a strong articulation in dance but also in the world at large, something we are eager to reflect in our programming at Sadler’s Wells ”

 

Free post show talk: Thursday 28 November 

 

Listing information:

Joe Moran / Dance Art Foundation
Arrangement 
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.

 

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 DANCE ART FOUNDATION
Dance Art Foundation is an independent arts charity working at the intersections of dance, visual art, social engagement and artist advocacy. www.danceartfoundation.com Led by Artistic Director Joe Moran with a national network of independent artists and curators, Dance Art Foundation incubates new ideas that extend the boundaries of dance, performance and choreography that it takes out into the world in fresh and imaginative ways. Performances are bold and progressive, often transgressing art form boundaries and in dialogue with other disciplines. Its Critical Dialogues projects drives dance forward, fostering fertile debate that challenges artists and widens public access to new thinking in dance. In social engagement, Dance Art Foundation is an international leader in dance-in-health. Recent projects include performance exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge and The Lowry, Salford, and hospital and hospice children workshops across the North and North East.

 

Dance Art Ltd, Dance Art Foundation’s sister creative collective taking its artists' work into fashion, music, events and film, was launched in 2015. Projects include Giles Deacon (SS16), Paul Smith (AW16-SS18), RCA (Graduate Fashion 2015-19) and Mr Hare (AW13). https://danceart-ltd.tumblr.com

 

ABOUT JOE MORAN 

Joe Moran is a British-Irish artist and choreographer with a wide-ranging practice incorporating theatre and gallery performance, curatorial projects, lecture-performance, drawing and spray paint works. His work is informed by his background in improvisation and experimentation, and a fascination with the opportunities and problems with formal choreographic composition and notions of expanded choreography. Joe is Artistic Director of Dance Art Foundation through which his performance and curatorial work is produced. He is an Associate Artist with Dance4 and was a Sadler’s Wells Summer University artist (2015-2018) and Delfina Foundation UK Associate (2016). He is a visiting artist at a number of institutions, including Royal College of Art and Trinity Laban. He frequently works at the intersections of dance and the visual arts and leads participatory projects with a range of groups and individuals addressing a wide range of concerns. Recent public programmes for Dance Art Foundation include Dance Critical Theory Group and the two-year research programme Why Everyone Want What We’ve Got. Joe is a passionate advocate for artist leadership and artist representation in the strategic and systemic development of dance and its dialogue with other disciplines and practices. His recent essay Nothing About Us Without Us was commissioned by Siobhan Davies Dance for the inaugural edition of its new journal Material. Recent and forthcoming commissions, projects and performances include TantsuRUUM, Estonia (November 2019), Nottdance festival at Nottingham Contemporary (October 2019), Live Creations performance exhibition at The Lowry (2019), London Contemporary Dance School (2019), Wysing Arts Centre (2018), Bluecoat (2018), Kettle’s Yard (fig-futures 2018) in collaboration with sculptor Eva Rothschild, Sadler’s Wells (2017), Whitechapel Gallery (2017), Delfina Foundation (2016), Block Universe/ fig-2 at the ICA (2015) and DRAF (Frieze 2014). Joe’s first exhibition of choreographic drawings, Tracks and Lines was presented at Gallery Lejeune in 2015 and in 2019 his durational performance work Singular entered the permanent collection of Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery in partnership with Kettle’s Yard supported by Outset, the Art Fund and Arts Council England.