Under the artistic directorship of Brendan Keaney, Ipswich’s DanceEast is making a major contribution to the flourishing cultural activity in the East of England. This autumn, Keaney has co-commissioned three world premières, bringing some of the world’s leading dance artists to his organisation’s purpose-built performance space, Jerwood DanceHouse.
The season opens with a world première from Russell Maliphant Company (2 and 3 October), marking the 20th anniversary of Maliphant’s collaboration with lighting designer Michael Hulls. Conceal | Reveal includes a revival of Broken Fall, originally created for Sylvie Guillem and the BalletBoyz, alongside a new quintet for the company and a new solo for Dana Fouras.
5|0 (16 October) is an evening of work celebrating Joss Arnott Dance’s 5th birthday and Dame Evelyn Glennie’s 50th. Grammy Award-winning composer and percussionist Dame Evelyn co-writes a new score with company musical director James Keane and performs live for the world première of Wide Awakening, the final part of a triple bill from the all-female company’s five dancers at the start of a UK tour.
Akram Khan Company and MOKO Dance present the world première of Chotto Desh (23 October then 16 to 20 December). Khan has joined forces with Theatre-Rites director Sue Buckmaster to reimagine Desh as his first-ever work for children and families. Chotto Desh, or small homeland, tracks a young man’s dreams from Britain to Bangladesh, using Khan’s cross-cultural story-telling via a mix of dance, text, visuals and sound.
The autumn season continues with: Haka Day Out, part of the cultural celebrations for Rugby World Cup 2015, produced by Corey Baker Dance (1 November); Renaud Wiser’s double bill Who Killed Bambi in collaboration with theatre director Richard Twyman, composer Oliver Coates, installation artists JaneJaney, light designer Chris Swain and five dancers (6 November); Candoco Dance Company’s double bill of Hetain Patel’s Let’s Talk About Dis and a new work by Alexander Whitley (13 November); previews of Protein Dance’s May Contain Food, an evening curated by choreographer Luca Silvestrini and composer Orlando Gough in a dining setting (19 to 21 November); and Anna Williams and Tom Roden’s interactive piece for children The Doodle Dance Show (4 and 5 December).
DanceEast’s Artistic Director and Chief Executive Brendan Keaney said: "when I arrived at DanceEast, I recognised that this amazing dance building required equally amazing content to populate it. Over the last two years we have been busy, building new relationships, co-producing and commissioning.
"We have also recruited a new cohort of associate artists, including Alexander Whitley and Anna Williams whose work will be featuring in this autumn’s programme. This season is a celebration of our investment to date; we want people to know that great things are happening in Ipswich.”