English National Ballet has announced that it has commissioned Grayson Perry to create a front cloth for She Said at Sadler’s Wells from Wednesday 13 to Saturday 16 April 2016.
Tamara Rojo, Artistic Director of English National Ballet said, “I have been an admirer of Grayson's work for many years now, and I’m thrilled he’s creating a front cloth for English National Ballet. After seeing his exhibition, The Vanity of Small Differences at the British Museum, and his Channel 4 series In the Best Possible Taste and Who Are You? I thought he would be the perfect artist to create a response to our She Said programme.
Grayson’s wonderful insight into different forms of identity made me believe he would create a truly inspiring piece of art. I am really grateful to him for agreeing to do this, and I am very excited to show his wonderful front cloth to our audience.”
Perry said, “as this trilogy of works called She Said hadn’t been created yet, a lot was left to my imagination. I thought about actually writing out what ‘she’ might have said but I am always one step away from being offensive so keeping it visual seemed safer.
I wanted the curtain to look like a giant drawing on paper perhaps by an outsider artist, definitely not slick anyway. The central character is having three ideas that could have something to do with the three ballets. She is in a landscape of phalluses. It is quite jolly and there is no rational explanation.”
English National Ballet’s new triple bill dedicated to female choreography, She Said, features three world premières from choreographers Aszure Barton, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Yabin Wang.
Canadian-born Barton’s Fantastic Beings is fuelled by a process of collaboration with the dancers. The work is set to a score by Mason Bates, a composer and DJ known for his innovative orchestral writing, and features costume designs by Michelle Jank.
Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings tells the story of Frida Kahlo, from her life-changing accident as a teenager to her stormy relationship with painter Diego Rivera. She collaborates with director Nancy Meckler and composer Peter Salem, with whom she created the award-winning dance version of A Streetcar Named Desire for Scottish Ballet.
Wang’s M-Dao brings the Greek heroine Medea into the realm of classical China, set against a flowing, silk backdrop with new music by Jocelyn Pook using Western and traditional Chinese instruments and designs by Kimie Nakano.