Press Release: LADY MACMILLAN ANNOUNCED AS FIRST PATRON OF K2CO

[Jan McNulty]

 

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

 

 

 

K2CO ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF 

LADY MACMILLAN AS ITS FIRST PATRON

 

 

K2CO dance company, led by award-winning choreographer and dance artist Rosie Kay, is delighted to announce that Lady MacMillan is joining the company as its very first Patron.

 

Deborah MacMillan, a huge supporter of Rosie Kay’s work, is the wife of the late Sir Kenneth MacMillan who is regarded as one of the UK’s finest choreographers. 

 

Commenting on her appointment Deborah said “The Arts are peopled by those rare and brave individuals who cherish and protect their creative flame and I am delighted and honoured to be the first patron of K2CO.”

 

Rosie Kay added: “I am delighted to have the patronage of Deborah MacMillan. She has been an incredible source of support and inspiration through the setting up of K2CO and I, with her vision, very much look forward to the future of my company and my choreography.

 

“Sir Kenneth MacMillan is the greatest choreographer of the 20^th century, and I have long studied his works. The combination of real emotional storytelling, exquisite and technically challenging dance, and the exploration of the biggest themes on life and death have been an inspiration to me. To be able to work with Deborah MacMillan now is a dream come true.”

 

K2CO also announces new board members joining the Oversight Board: Jo Quillan, COO at The Really Useful Group; digital arts curator Tony Guillan; writer, speaker and University of Edinburgh Rector Simon Fanshawe and director and photographer Robert Knights.

 

K2CO was launched in 2022 and in 2023 toured to Norwich Theatre Playhouse, Blackpool Grand Theatre and Theatre Royal, Bath with an updated version of Kay’s acclaimed 5-star award winning production 5 Soldiers. Funded by Arts Council England it used dance to explore the emotional stories of a group of combatants who become fractured by war. 

 

Running alongside the main stage performance of 5 Soldiers at Norwich Theatre Playhouse was Rosie Kay’s award-winning engagement programme, INCUBATE which saw the company work with young students from Norfolk Institute of Performing Arts. 

 

Kay looks forward to shaping the vision of K2CO with Deborah MacMillan, and the Oversight Board will help with Kay’s plans to tour her work, fundraising and developing a new work for large scale theatres.

 

K2CO programming details will be announced later this year.

 

 

Notes to Editors

 

K2CO is a dance company that makes totally unique, political, and timely work on controversial subjects. We exist to support the choreographic vision of artist Rosie Kay. We aim to highlight the power of dance as an art form and as a means of human communication. Dance can convey joy, love, passion, fear, sex, sexuality as well as complex socio-political situations from a human perspective. The company aims to create the best quality dance which is at the forefront of world contemporary dance theatre. The company uses ways to help audiences engage through targeted engagement work related to the themes of each show, through digital capture and distribution and through professional training programmes to increase education, technical and thinking skills in the dance sector. 

 

MISSION: We work with academics, universities, artists, and communities to research works. These include participants recruited through charities on issue-based themes. We train and nurture professionals, preparing them for the world of work and exploring themes of Rosie Kay’s work and principles. We do this through a robust training programme that supports participants from less privileged and diverse backgrounds. We create and produce world class dance and bring it to audiences in the UK, working with the top large-scale theatres. inspiring and making work that becomes a talking point before, during and afterwards. 

 

VISION: Our vision is to be the foremost female-led dance company in the UK, making work that is important, meaningful and highly engaging. We will tour to theatres that want dance to make an impact and grow audiences. We want to make work that leaves audiences exhilarated, thinking and motivated. K2CO will show that dance has the power to inspire, investigate and challenge ideas of today’s society.

 

Biographies

 

Lady MacMillan - Patron

Born in Queensland, Australia, she was educated in Sydney and won a scholarship to the National Art School where she studied painting and sculpture. Since 1970 she has lived in London, where she met and married Kenneth MacMillan. She has designed ballets for the stage, ‘Quartet’, ‘Sea of Troubles’ and ‘Concerto’. For television, ‘A Lot of Happiness’. She returned to painting full-time in 1984. She exhibits in London and for 10 years also at Glyndebourne. At Expo 17 in Astana Kazakhstan 20 of her paintings were shown in the Opera House depicting backstage life to co-inside with performances of Manon by her late husband. Her work is in private collections in the USA and the UK. She was a member of the Royal Opera House Board (1993–6) and was Chairman of The Friends of Covent Garden (1996). Between 1996 and 1998 she was a member of the Arts Council of England and chaired the Dance Panel. She is custodian of her late husband’s Choreography and Theatre work. 

 

New Board Members

Jo Quillan

A proud Scot from Glasgow, Jo has lived and worked in London for over 30 years.  A qualified accountant, she has held senior UK and International finance positions in the recorded music and music publishing industries, having worked for both Sony Music International and EMI, and headed up Finance & Operations outside North America at sports talent and marketing agency Wasserman and at UK out-of-home media specialist Posterscope.  Jo joined Andrew Lloyd Webber’s global theatrical licensing and production company The Really Useful Group as COO in 2019, fulfilling a long-held career ambition and personal dream to work in theatre.  

 

Tony Guillan

Tony Guillan is a producer, curator and creative consultant who works with artists and cultural organisations across the visual and performing arts, film and new media, specialising in the integration of digital and broadcast techniques, and the application of new technologies (XR, AI, Web3), to create work and engage audiences on and off-line. He has produced film and new media work, led public art commissioning, artist development, digital innovation and strategy consultancy for organisations including Tate, Artangel, UK City of Culture, The Space, IWM and The University of Oxford.

 

Simon Fanshawe OBE

Simon Fanshawe OBE is the co-founder of Diversity by Design, a broadcaster and author. His latest book is “The Power of Difference” - the Chartered Institute Management’s Book of 2023 when he was also voted into HR Magazine’s Hall of Fame. He is currently on the Board of Powerful Women and is Chairman of Hexagon Housing Association. He was previously Chairman of Sussex University, and on the Boards of Housing & Care 21, the Museum of London and Brighton Dome & Festival. 

He has long been involved in campaigns for equality and positive social change. He was a co-founder of Stonewall and of the Kaleidoscope Trust. In 2013 he was awarded an OBE for services to Higher Education and an Honorary Doctorate by Sussex for services to diversity and human rights. 

 

Robert Knight

Robert Knights has worked as a freelance director, mainly in television and film all his life.  His plays and series include, The Glittering Prizes, The History Man, Tender is the Night, Mosley, The Ebony Tower, Morse, Porterhouse Blue, and The Dawning.  Actors he has directed include Anthony Hopkins, Tom Conti, Tony Sher, Geraldine James, Helen Mirren, Sir Laurence Olivier, Ian Richardson, Les Dawson, David Jason, John Cleese, Dawn French, Mary Steenburgen, Jean Simmons, and Jonathan Cake. Nominated three times for BAFTAS:  David Jason winning one as Best Actor, and Christopher Gunning for Best Music.  Won an Emmy in New York for Porterhouse Blue. Writers whose screenplays he has directed include Frederic Raphael, John Mortimer, Malcolm Bradbury, Dennis Potter, Christopher Hampton, Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran.

 

Rosie Kay 

Rosie was born in Scotland, danced from a very early age, then trained at London Contemporary Dance School, graduating in 1998, before a career as a dancer in Poland, France, Germany and the USA. Kay returned to the UK in 2003, founded Rosie Kay Dance Company 2004-21 and has now set up K2CO a new venture for her past and future works. 

 

Rosie Kay is a Director and Trustee of Dance Consortium which exists to tour the best contemporary dance from across the world to local audiences across the UK.  

Kay’s works up to date include a contemporary set adaptation of Romeo + Juliet (2021) and returned to performing on stage with the Absolute Solo II tour in 2021 with three personal solos danced by Kay, with Adult Female Dancercelebrated as the ‘Top 5 Dance Works of 2021’ by The Observer and Kay was nominated for a National Dance Award 2022 for Outstanding Female Performance (Modern) for Absolute Solo II. Kay is well known for the multi award-winning work 5 SOLDIERS (2010- present) based on intense research with the British Army and large-scale development of this work, 10 SOLDIERS (2019). Kay’s works tour to Sadlers Wells, Birmingham REP, Norwich Theatre Royal, Salisbury Playhouse and regularly tour Europe and the USA.

 

Rosie Kay’s Fantasia, a pure-dance work about beauty was included in The Guardian’s ‘Top 10 Dance of 2019’.  MK ULTRA was created in 2017 a work about conspiracy theory and pop made with BBC film-maker Adam Curtis. Other works include Motel (2016), a collaboration with visual artists Huntley Muir, Sluts of Possession (2013) created with rare archive material from the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, There is Hope (2012) exploring religion, Double Points: K (2008) a collaboration with Emio Greco| PC and Asylum (2005) based on research with asylum seekers. Kay choreographed the live Commonwealth Games Handover Ceremony (2018), watched by over 1 billion people worldwide and has worked in film as the choreographer to Sunshine on Leith (2013).

 

Kay was the first choreographer appointed Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the School of Anthropology, University of Oxford (2013). Awards for her work include Best Independent Company (2015) and nominated for Best Choreography for 5 SOLDIERS (2015), National Dance Awards and nominated for Best Independent Company 2012 and 2017, a Royal Society for Public Health Award for support to military communities, and the Bonnie Bird New Choreography Award. Kay was awarded by the Queen as a ‘Young Achiever of Scotland’ and won the Bonnie Bird New Choreography Award from Laban. 5 SOLDIERS Community Engagement work INCUBATE was Highly Commended by the Royal Society of Public Health. Kay has published several academic works and themes include conflict and choreography, kinaesthetic empathy, neuroscience, and disordered eating.

 

[Peanut68]

Was ‘Five Soldiers’ (or it’s precursor ‘10 Soldiers’?) a piece that was shown on BBC2 late late nights as part of a repeat of several snippets of programmes that filled the void between last late night programme & the next day several years ago?

I regularly stayed up to watch & rewatch & found it mesmerising & so moving as it evocatively portrayed the nightmare that was trench warfare of (I think) the First World War. It was so visceral & included vocal sounds from the dancers. I’ve never been able to find exactly what it was… I’d previously thought maybe it was from Akram Khans  ‘Dust’ but I’m just not at all sure it was (never saw). Definitely felt the trench warfare soldier scenes in Rambert’s ‘Peeky Blinders’ drew (well) from this.

I’d love to be enlightened if another forum member knows & id really love to view the whole piece….

Thanks in advance! 

[ajf]

I saw 5 Soldiers in a space somewhere in Bloomsbury a number of years ago. From what I recall it had a mixed gender cast of 5 dressed in army-like fatigues and was danced in a square outlined on the ground as a stage. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is not to do with the First World War. It is a piece based on experiences of present day soldiers. 

[alison]

Might it have been something by Balletboyz?

[Jane S]

This?

[Jan McNulty]

1 hour ago, Jane S said:

This?

 

That's the one Jane!  Thanks

[Peanut68]

It was not 5 soldiers as far as I can see …. In fact, I now see I’ve watched that online before when I was Googling to try find the piece! I found 5 soldiers an equally stunning piece too. The ‘late night’ almost used like the testcard piece was not modern army dress…I definitely think it was to be representative of WW1.

I don’t really recall it having music… more percussive sounds from feet on ground/sand & body on body noises & shouts - not actual drill calls, just sounds reminiscent of them. It was utterly compelling. 
Is there something in Rambert repertoire perhaps? 

Edited April 15 by Peanut68

[ajf]

There is a piece by Akram Khan called Xenos which was created around the centenary of WW1. It is for a single dancer, Khan, and has specifically composed music. I saw at Sadler’s Wells and thought it was the most moving dance work I saw that year. I do not know if it was ever filmed but it was supposed to be the last piece that Khan ever made to be danced by himself so maybe. 

[Peanut68]

Thank you ajf - That sounds like you were moved in same way as I was by this piece… but it definitely had  I’d say a minimum of 8 male dancers…& my gut had said Akram Khan;- the use of sound did have similar vibes to his Giselle now I think about it…. But the mystery still not completely solved…! 
Hmmm…. Just found a link to this on Sadlers Wells…and suggests the original piece was expanded to more dancers & sounds very similar in description but the trailer doesn’t seem the same…

Is this ringing any bells with anyone else? 
I used to stay up late night after night to watch it! The clip was intertwined with clips of nature programmes/current affairs etc etc! Quite likely this was about 15-16 years ago
 

Edited April 15 by Peanut68

[Peanut68]

Oh Lord…. Just tried searching on YouTube using ideas such as ‘BBC dance film world war 1’

Cannot comprehend how this listed such awful options as pole dancing, utterly abusive  stretching for dancers, a woman talking about sex addiction & I can’t even say what else…reaffirms why I do very little online stuff…and the phone I use is s child hand me down so thought it had controls to prevent dubious stuff???? I despair 😩 Why do YouTube clips just start playing too?

Traumatised…. Might need to go down a safe ballet rabbit hole now to watch nice things! 

Edited April 15 by Peanut68

[AnneMarriott]

7 hours ago, Peanut68 said:

Oh Lord…. Just tried searching on YouTube using ideas such as ‘BBC dance film world war 1’

Cannot comprehend how this listed such awful options as pole dancing, utterly abusive  stretching for dancers, a woman talking about sex addiction & I can’t even say what else…reaffirms why I do very little online stuff…and the phone I use is s child hand me down so thought it had controls to prevent dubious stuff???? I despair 😩 Why do YouTube clips just start playing too?

Traumatised…. Might need to go down a safe ballet rabbit hole now to watch nice things! 

Off topic I know, but this reminds me of the time I tried to identify the theme music from a post-war Children's Hour serial called "Naughty Sophia".  I won't go into details but my eyebrows took a long time to descend to normal position.

[Odyssey]

8 hours ago, ajf said:

There is a piece by Akram Khan called Xenos which was created around the centenary of WW1. It is for a single dancer, Khan, and has specifically composed music. I saw at Sadler’s Wells and thought it was the most moving dance work I saw that year. I do not know if it was ever filmed but it was supposed to be the last piece that Khan ever made to be danced by himself so maybe. 

If this is the piece, you can find more if you search more specifically on YouTube Xenos Akram Khan.

 

 

 

Edited April 16 by Odyssey
Clarification

[Peanut68]

Wonderful….but still not it. The piece I seek was very much a group piece. All male…. Probably 8-10 dancers. Lots of what I think is termed contact & release (??) & ‘organic’ lifts. 
I can’t be the only insomniac out there who saw this?? 

[Peanut68]

Could it have been created by a dance troupe similar to Stomp I wonder? 
The uniforms worn were very much reminiscent of British WW1 soldiers….a few moustaches & hairstyles very typical of the period too

Edited April 16 by Peanut68

[Lynette H]

Young Men by the Ballet Boyz ? A group piece set in the first world war, later made into a film. It was shown on the BBC. 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0834qvd

[FionaM]

@Peanut68

 

Regarding your YouTube or Google suggestions … you can improve this to show what you are interested in by watching more!  Then the algorithm will suggest similar.  At the moment it is guessing a wide range because it doesn’t know you.   (My children were highly amused by my Instagram suggestions … entirely ballet!) 

 

You can switch off the auto play feature in YouTube:

 

1. Open YouTube . 
2. Tap your profile photo 
3. Select Settings
4. Tap General. 
5. Select Playback in feeds.
6. Tap Off to turn off autoplaying videos in your YouTube feed

[Peanut68]

4 hours ago, Lynette H said:

Young Men by the Ballet Boyz ? A group piece set in the first world war, later made into a film. It was shown on the BBC. 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0834qvd

Yes yes YES!!! This must be it!!! Thank you so much Lynette H…. Years of agonising over the mystery solved I think! 

Does anyone know of any way to watch the whole footage of the full length piece? I’ve only ever seen the clip used as late night filler in BBC2 but still get goosebumps remembering it. So absorbing & moving. 
Thank you again! 

Edited April 16 by Peanut68

[Lynette H]

You can buy it from the ballet Boyz web site for dowload (DVD out of stock)

 

 

 

[alison]

2 hours ago, Peanut68 said:

Yes yes YES!!! This must be it!!! Thank you so much Lynette H…. Years of agonising over the mystery solved I think! 

Does anyone know of any way to watch the whole footage of the full length piece? I’ve only ever seen the clip used as late night filler in BBC2 but still get goosebumps remembering it. So absorbing & moving. 
Thank you again! 

 

That's what I thought you must have meant

[Peanut68]

As I’d prefer a DVD I’m going to pop a ‘wanted’ post on the Fir Sale/Wanted page here
thanks all again!