Press Release: Candoco Dance Company presents a Triple Bill at Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance, SE8 3DZ

[Jan McNulty]

Candoco Dance Company present

Triple Bill

 

28 February & 1 March 2014

Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance, SE8 3DZ

 

Lea Anderson – Miniatures

Thomas Hauert  – New Company Work  WORLD PREMIERE

Javier de Frutos -  Two for C

Performance 7:30pm

Tickets: £15 (concessions £10)

www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/whats-on or 0208 6918600

 

4 March & 5 March 2014

Warwick Arts Centre, CV4 7AL

 

Trisha Brown – Set and Reset/Reset

Thomas Hauert – New Company Work  WORLD PREMIERE

Javier de Frutos -  Two for C

Performances at 7:30pm

Tickets: £14.50 - £20.50

http://www.warwickartscentre.co.uk or 0247 6524524

 

“Brilliant and bracing … gripping to watch” -  The Guardian

 

The award-winning and visionary Candoco Dance Company, whose pioneering work combines non-disabled and disabled dancers through a catalogue of original, commissioned repertoire, present two triple bills - 28 February & 1 March 2014 at Trinity Leban Conservatoire in London, with the second triple bill appearing at the Warwick Arts Centre, 4 & 5 March 2014.

 

These two programmes include the WORLD PREMIERE of a newly commissioned work for the company by Thomas Hauert. Swiss choreographer Hauert’s new full-company work takes its inspiration from the 1984 documentary by Daniel Schmid Tosca’s Kiss, which follows the melancholy, yet surprisingly beautiful lives of opera singers in a retirement home.  Hauert, whose work includes collaborations with influential dance makers Anne Teresa De Keersaeker and William Forsythe, combines delicate references to childhood games with nostalgic memories of old age. His innovative creative practice uses elements of improvisation to create a unique and spontaneous experience for both the audience and cast each time it is performed.

 

Both Triple Bill programmes also feature Two for C by award-winning choreographer Javier de Frutos whose previous collaborators include the Pet Shop Boys for their full-length stage work The Most Incredible Thing. This is de Frutos’ newest work for Candoco, who has created four works for the company since 2000. Like de Frutos’ 2012 duet Studies for C, Two for C was also inspired by Tennessee Williams’ play Camino Real, which explores a world in which a couple is trapped in a longstanding relationship, characterised by struggle and power play. Set to traditional Mexican Ranchera music, the performances take place in de Frutos’ characteristically vivid world, combining a familiar domestic setting with the use of Mexican wrestling masks for the performers suggesting deeper, darker forces are at work while giving Two for C an almost comic feel.

 

Lea Anderson’s Miniatures completes the bill at the London performances taking place at Trinity Leban Conservatoire (28 Feb & 1 March 2014) The piece is a futuristic nod to the Elizabethan era, playfully exploring an imagined world ‘beyond the frame’ of traditional portraiture. It is a charming and rigorous solo inspired by the V&A’s miniatures portrait collection, full of references to poses, dress and demeanour of the period. The resulting piece cleverly uses the modern day ‘frame’ of a TV screen, to lure audiences into a locked gaze with Candoco dancer Annie Hanauer, evoking questions around power and reality.

 

Originally choreographed on a cast of non-disabled dancers in 1983, Set and Reset/Reset completes the programme at the Warwick Arts Centre (4 & 5 March 2014). This is the final time the company will be performing this work in the UK, which has been a firm favourite with audiences for the past three years. A landmark piece of the contemporary dance repertoire, this work was restaged by Candoco in collaboration with Trisha Brown Dance Company for the first time in 2011. Performed to a contagious score by renowned multi-media artist Laurie Anderson, this piece was reimagined by former Trisha Brown Dance Company dancer Abigail Yager in collaboration with Candoco’s dancers using an improvisation process based on the same principles on which the original work was created in 1983: “keep it simple, stay on edge, work with visibility and invisibility and get in line”.  

 

Founded in 1991 by Celeste Dandeker and Adam Benjamin, Candoco Dance Company have been pioneers at the forefront of creating an inclusive dance practice to combine the skills of non-disabled and disabled dancers for over 22 years.  Currently lead by Artistic Directors Pedro Machado and Stine Nilsen the company has a permanent cast of 7 dancers who perform a repertoire of original and commissioned work by world-class dance makers including Hofesh Shechter, Javier de Frutos and Nigel Charnock. More information on the company can be found on at: www.candoco.co.uk

 

END

 

Notes to Editors

 

CHOREOGRAPHERS

 

Lea Anderson

 

Lea Anderson MBE is a British choreographer and artistic director. With Teresa Barker and Gaynor Coward, she co-founded The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs dance companies, with which she has choreographed over 100 works. The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs are two of the foremost contemporary dance companies who have worked in Britain over the past 25 years. Under the artistic direction of Anderson, they have created a distinctive choreographic language that is as defiantly individual as it is recognisable. Original music performed live for all productions and notable collaborations with costume, stage and lighting designers have become defining features of their work. Lea and her companies have also become recognised for outdoor and site specific works, performances in alternative venues such as Glastonbury Festival, work for TV, film and video and an innovative and responsive programme of work with young people. Lea Anderson’s work has been studied from GCSE to post-graduate level.

 

 

Javier De Frutos

 

Javier De Frutos is an award winning director and choreographer. His work is in the repertoire of companies including Rambert Dance Company and The Royal Ballet among others. He choreographed Carousel for the Chichester Festival Theatre, the National Theatre’s production of Death and the King’s Horseman and the acclaimed West End and touring production of Cabaret, for which he won the prestigious Olivier Award for ‘Best Theatre Choreographer’ in 2007.

 

Javier is also the recipient of the 1995 Paul Hamlyn Award, the 2004 Time Out Live Award, and the 2005 Critics Circle National Dance Award. In 1999, his achievements were recognised in a South Bank Show special. In 2000 he became a fellow of The Arts Council of England, under which he conducted two years of research on the work of playwright Tennessee Williams, culminating in a contemporary piece entitled Blue Roses which was set to extract readings from The Glass Menagerie and performed at Sadler’s Wells.

 

Javier’s film and TV credits include The Long Road to Mazatlan in collaboration with Isaac Julien, which was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001. Javier is also credited with the movement direction for Mika’s music video We Are Golden and more recently the new HBO drama Game of Thrones.

 

Thomas Hauert

 

Thomas is the Artistic Director of Belgium based dance company ZOO, which he founded following performing with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/ Rosas. ZOO's work initially grew out of basic research into movement. Prompted by Thomas Hauert, the dancers disassociate themselves from their bodies’ usual movement forms. In 2013 Thomas won the “Swiss Dance Award for Current Dance Works” for his piece From B to B and is a contributor to William Forsythe’s Motionbank project.

 

Trisha Brown

 

Trisha Brown is internationally acclaimed as a leading choreographer and has offered countless innovations to the making of dance. Now Candoco adds a new dimension to her work by performing it with dancers with different bodies in a fresh take on what was seen as Brown’s breakthrough piece: ‘Set and Reset is unmistakably Miss Brown at her most tantalizing. Her virtuosic dancers exhibit a quality of movement that is distinctly hers - dartingly quick but so fluid that the body seems a conduit for flowing energy’ (The New York Times).

 

The seductively fluid quality of the movement in this tour de force, juxtaposed with the unpredictable geometric style, has become the hallmark of Trisha Brown’s work. Performed to a driving score by Laurie Anderson, the exploration of visibility and invisibility is reflected in the translucent costumes and set by Robert Rauschenberg.

 

For more information on Trisha Brown Dance Company, please visit www.trishabrowncompany.org

 

END TO ALL