Press Release: Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) at Sadler's Wells in April 2023

[Jan McNulty]

Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) Gabriela Carrizo / Jiří Kylián / Crystal Pite & Simon McBurney    Sadler’s Wells Theatre, EC1R 4TN Wednesday 19 - Saturday 22 April 2023 Tickets: £15 - £65 Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com     Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) present a trio of works at Sadler’s Wells on Wednesday 19 - Saturday 22 April. The three works in this UK premiere span continents and contemporary, global issues.   Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite and British theatre maker and Artistic Director ofComplicité Simon McBurney, reflect on their fears and cautious hopes for the age we are living in. In an extract from their new four-year collaboration, Figures in Extinction [1.0], these world-renowned artists work together, drawing from materials such as the sound of icecaps melting, tree roots growing, and the protests of climate change deniers.                                 World-renowned choreographer Jiří Kylián (Czechoslovakia, 1947) was Artistic Director of Nederlands Dans Theater for nearly a quarter century. Gods and Dogs is the 75th choreography Kylián created. It is ‘an unfinished work’, referring to Kylián’s fascination for the beauty of what is left incomplete in life, and visualizes the line between normality and abnormality. Argentinian choreographer and Peeping Tom co-Artistic Director Gabriela Carrizo combines contemporary dance with acrobatics and slapstick in La Ruta. On a dark, fog-shrouded stage, a street is at once a motorway, a lonely village lane and a forest path. Space and time are suspended, and it is up to the audience to create their own connections. With her experimental style, Carrizo takes us into a parallel dream world open to interpretation. Founded in 1959, NDT is an internationally recognized contemporary dance company dedicated to creation, research, and talent development. Each season, the company collaborates with upcoming and renowned choreographers and artists from around the world. Emily Molnar, NDT Artistic Director said, "We are thrilled to be back at Sadler's Wells, a longtime creative partner and an esteemed stage renowned for international dance. The three works in this NDT 1 evening, speak to our versatility as a creation-based company through the mysterious dream world of Carrizo's La Ruta, Kylian's evocative comment on normality and insanity in Gods and Dogs, and Pite with Simon McBurney’s Figures in Extinction [1.0], which calls us to a deeper and more urgent connection with nature. We hope this programme will provoke the imagination and we are delighted to share it with the London audience!" Crystal Pite is a Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist ENDS NOTES TO EDITORS Listings Information Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT)            Gabriela Carrizo / Jiří Kylián / Crystal Pite & Simon McBurney      Sadler’s Wells Theatre, EC1R 4TN Wednesday 19 - Saturday 22 April 2023 Tickets: £15 - £65 Ticket Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.sadlerswells.com About Sadler’s Wells Sadler's Wells is a world-leading dance organisation. We strive to make and share dance that inspires us all. Our acclaimed year-round programme spans dance of every kind, from contemporary to flamenco, Bollywood to ballet, salsa to street dance and tango to tap.   We commission, produce and present more dance than any other organisation in the world. Since 2005, we have helped to bring close to 200 new dance works to the stage, embracing both the popular and the unknown.   Each year, over half a million people visit our three London theatres - Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Lilian Baylis Studio and Peacock Theatre. Millions more attend our touring productions nationally and internationally or explore our digital platforms, including Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage. In 2023 we’re opening a fourth London venue in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Sadler’s Wells East will house a 550-seat mid-scale theatre, as well as facilities for the Choreographic School and Hip Hop Theatre Academy.  Supporting artists is at the heart of our work. We have associate artists and companies, which nurture some of the most exciting talent working in dance today. We host the National Youth Dance Company, which draws together some of the brightest young dancers from across the country. Sadler’s Wells Breakin' Convention runs professional development programmes to champion and develop the world’s best hip hop artists, as well as producing, programming and touring groundbreaking hip hop performances.  Around 30,000 people take part in our learning and engagement programmes every year. We support schools local to our theatres in Islington and Stratford, designing experiences for children and young people to watch, explore and critically engage with the arts. We also run Company of Elders, a resident performance company of dancers aged over 60 who rehearse with renowned artists to make new work for public performances locally, nationally and internationally.   Sadler’s Wells is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.    www.sadlerswells.com Stay up to date with everything Sadler’s Wells on social media Facebook: @SadlersWells Twitter: @Sadlers_Wells Instagram: @sadlers_wells YouTube: Sadler’s Wells Theatre About Nederlands Dans Theater Founded in 1959, Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) is an internationally recognized contemporary dance company dedicated to creation, research and talent development. Each season, the company collaborates with upcoming and renowned choreographers and artists from around the world in its commitment to being a creation house for diverse voices, ideas and approaches in dance. Based in The Hague, the Netherlands, NDT consists of two companies, NDT 1 and NDT 2 and is led by Artistic Director Emily Molnar and Managing Director Willemijn Maas. NDT 1 consists of 28 dancers globally, who are recognized for their creative versatility and daring individual expression. NDT 1 is dedicated to a multi-voiced platform that collaborates with internationally acclaimed choreographers. Each season, the company presents four programmes that are performed throughout the Netherlands and tour worldwide to leading houses in Europe, the United Kingdom, Asia, the Americas, and Australia.    At the heart of the company is a commitment to collaboration, curiosity, innovation and community. Like all art, NDT believes dance creates, provokes and inspires an open space for dialogue toward an inclusive society. About Jiří Kylián World-renowned choreographer Jiří Kylián (Czechoslovakia, 1947) was Artistic Director of Nederlands Dans Theater for nearly a quarter century.   Kylián received a scholarship for the Royal Ballet School in 1967. After this, Kylián left to join the Stuttgart Ballet led by John Cranko where he made his choreographic debut. After having created three ballets for NDT (Viewers, Stoolgame and La Cathédrale Engloutie), Kylián became the company’s Artistic Director in 1975 together with Hans Knill. In 1978 Kylián put NDT on the international map with Sinfonietta. That same year, together with Carel Birnie, Kylián founded NDT 2, which served as a bridge between school and professional company life. In 1991 Kylián initiated NDT 3; a company that created opportunities for older dancers, above forty years of age. After an extraordinary record of service, Kylián handed over the artistic leadership in 1999, but remained the company’s house choreographer until December 2009.   Kylián’s entire body of work counts 100 creations to date, of which 77 have been performed by NDT and no less than 75 were especially created for the company. Furthermore, Kylián has made pieces for companies worldwide such as the Stuttgart Ballet, the Opéra de Paris, the Munich Bayerisches Staatsballett, and the Tokyo Ballet. In 2020, NDT 1 presented the programme Sometimes, I wonder, which marked the return of Kylián’s work to the company. About Crystal Pite  Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite (Vancouver, 1970) has been associate choreographer with NDT since 2008 for which she has created: Pilot X (2005), The Second Person (2007), Frontier (2008), Plot Point (2010, nominated for the prestigious Benois de La Dance award), Solo Echo (2012), Parade (2013), In the Event (2015), The Statement (2016), Partita for 8 Dancers (2018), Kunstkamer (2019) and most recently, Figures in Extinction [1.0] (2022) in collaboration with Simon McBurney, Artistic Director of Complicité. Pite’s professional choreographic debut was in 1990, at Ballet British Columbia. Since then, Pite has created over 50 works for companies around the world. Pite is an Associate Choreographer of NDT, Associate Dance Artist of Canada’s National Arts Centre, and Associate Artist at Sadler’s Wells, London.   In 2002, Pite formed her own company Kidd Pivot in Vancouver. About Simon McBurney  Actor, writer and director Simon McBurney is one of the most innovative, mercurial and influential theatre-makers working today. In 1983 he co-founded the company Complicité, since when all his work has been made through a deeply researched and highly collaborative process which fuses a profound belief that all aspects of the theatre should challenge the limits of theatrical form.   As well as writing and creating original works, McBurney has brought great plays to the stage - Beckett, Brecht, Bulgakov, Durrenmatt, Ionesco, Daniil Kharms, Arthur Miller, Bruno Schulz, Shakespeare and Ruzzante - and adapted numerous works of literature. He adapted and directed The Master and Margarita(2012) for the 2012 Avignon Festival, and more recently Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity (2015) for the Schaubühne Theatre, Berlin. McBurney’s opera work includes directing A Dog’s Heart (2010) a new opera by Sasha Raskatov from the novella by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Magic Flute (2012) and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (2017). In 2020 he directed Alban Berg’s Wozzeck with Simon Rattle conducting.   McBurney’s work continually returns to political, social and philosophical questions of the way we live, think and act as a society, he is unafraid of melding the most ancient of theatrical forms with the most recent aspects of modern technology.   These aspects of McBurney’s work are all present in the award-winning The Encounter (2015). The show played sold out runs at London’s Barbican theatre in 2016 and 2017 and on Broadway.    His numerous awards include the Berlin Konrad Woolf Prize for Europe’s Outstanding Multi-Disciplinary Artists (2008) and the prestigious Yomiuri Prize in Japan (2009), which he was the first foreigner to win. McBurney was Artiste Associé at the 2012 Avignon Festival and has honorary doctorates at several universities including Lund in Sweden, London Metropolitan University and Cambridge University. About Gabriela Carrizo Gabriela Carrizo (1970, Córdoba, AR) was ten years old when she started dancing. Carrizo moved to Europe when she was nineteen, and worked with Caroline Marcadé, Les Ballets C de la B (La Tristeza Complice, 1997, and Iets op Bach, 1998), Koen Augustijnen (Portrait intérieur, 1994) and Needcompany (Images of Affection, 2001).   Carrizo created a solo piece, E tutto sará d’ombra e di caline, Bartime, a collaboration with Einat Tuchman and Lisi Estaras, and the choreography for the opera Wolf (2002), by Les Ballets C de la B.   In 2013 Carrizo created The missing door (2013) for NDT 1, andThe Land, a collaboration with the Munich Residenztheater in 2015. More recently, Carrizo worked with Franck Chartier on 31 Rue Vandenbranden(2018), an adaptation with Le Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon of Peeping Tom’s original. The new piece opened the prestigious Biennale de la Danse de Lyon in 2018.   Carrizo co-founded award-winning Belgian dance theatre company Peeping Tom, along with Franck Chartier in 2000, and has been joint Artistic Director with Chartier ever since.

[Sim]

Much as I like NDT, I think I'll be skipping this one.