Press Release: Sadler's Wells - les ballets C de la B present the UK premiere of Alain Platel's tauberbach on 8 & 9 April

[Jan McNulty]

les ballets C de la B
Alain Platel’s tauberbach

UK Premiere
Tuesday 8 & Wednesday 9 April 2014
Performances at 7.30pm
Tickets: £17.50
Ticket Office: 0844 412 4300 or www.sadlerswells.com

 

The critically acclaimed contemporary ensemble les ballets C de la B returns to Sadler’s Wells with the UK premiere of Alain Platel’s latest creation tauberbach on Tuesday 8 & Wednesday 9 April 2014.

 

Initiated by actress Elsie de Brauw, who asked Platel to create a performance using both dancers and actors, tauberbach sees Platel continue his research and development of movement material that he describes as ‘bastard dance’, seeing him search for a language of movement that embodies feelings that are too vast. Platel has previously explored this in pitié!, Out of Context - for Pina and C(H)OEURS.

 

For tauberbach Platel is inspired by Marco Prado’s award-winning 2005 documentary Estamira, which tells the story of a woman who suffers from schizophrenia and lives and works in a Brazilian waste disposal site and has developed her own particular way of communicating with the small community she lives in. The production looks to the themes of how to live or even survive with dignity under nearly impossible circumstances.

tauberbach also sees Platel take inspiration from Artur Zmijewski’s Tauber Bach, a choir formed of deaf people who sing the music of Bach. The production is accompanied by chorales by Bach and an aria from Mozarts’s Così fan tutte performed by the dancers, and features music from Tauber Bach. The musical direction for tauberbach is by Steven Prengels, who has previously worked with Platel on a number of productions.

 

les ballets C de la B was founded by Alain Platel in 1984. Since then the Company has enjoyed success at home in Belgium, and abroad. Over the years it has developed into an artistic platform for a variety of choreographers, allowing artists from various disciplines and backgrounds to take part in a dynamic creative process. Platel’s past productions include Wolf (2003), Nine Fingers (2007), pitié! (2008), Gardenia (2010) and C(H)OEURS (2012), commissioned by the opera director Gerard Mortier and performed alongside the Teatro Real choir. Following its world premiere earlier in the year, tauberbach is nominated for the Berliner Theatertreffen 2014.

 

Supported by City of Ghent, Province of East-Flanders, the Flemish Authorities.