New Artistic Director for Scottish Dance Theatre

Published: 21 March 2019
Reporter: Vera Liber

Joan Clevillé Credit: Alan Richardson

Scottish Dance Theatre announces the appointment of Joan Clevillé as the seventh Artistic Director of the company.

Clevillé joined Scottish Dance Theatre as a dancer in 2009 until 2013 and in 2015 founded Joan Clevillé Dance in Dundee. His appointment completes Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre’s new leadership team as he joins Andrew Panton (Artistic Director Dundee Rep and Joint CEO Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre) and Liam Sinclair (Executive Director and Joint CEO, Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre).

Born in Barcelona, Clevillé has worked for seventeen years as a dancer, teacher and rehearsal director in companies across Europe, including Lost Dog, Dog Kennel Hill Project (London), the Ballet of the Graz Opera (Austria), the Choreographic Centre of Valencia and Ballet Carmen Roche (Madrid). He is a member of Collective Endeavours, a Glasgow-based music and dance improvisation collective, and works regularly as a guest teacher for international companies and vocational schools in Sweden, The Netherlands, Austria and the UK.

His work as a choreographer has been presented in venues and festivals across the UK and Europe and as far as Argentina and Japan. He has also received commissions from VERVE (UK), Next Liberty (Austria), Thomas Noone Dance (Barcelona), Café Fuerte (Austria), Project Y (Scotland) and Institut del Teatre (Barcelona) amongst others. Since summer 2014, Joan has been Associate Artist of Scottish School of Contemporary Dance, and was one of Glasgow Tramway’s 2017 Associate Artists.

Clevillé said if his appointment, “it is an immense joy and an honour to have been appointed Artistic Director of Scottish Dance Theatre, the company that brought me to Scotland from Barcelona ten years ago. Back then, SDT offered me the opportunity to find my own voice as a dancer and choreographer, and Dundee became both a new home and a springboard from where to launch my own independent company, Joan Clevillé Dance, in 2015.

"As a Catalan choreographer, I have always felt incredibly welcomed and supported in Scotland, and I am now thrilled by the prospect of leading its national dance company. I look forward to developing an ambitious and inclusive artistic vision driven by artistic exploration, learning and a desire to engage with our contemporary reality. Working from our home at Dundee Rep, we will continue to create world-class dance that is engaging and engaged, sharing Scotland’s distinctive creative voice with audiences around the world”.

Scottish Dance Theatre is currently touring Scotland and the UK with Velvet Petal by Fleur Darkin with upcoming dates in Newcastle, Edinburgh, Derby and London before returning to Dundee and the company’s summer tour will see them première a new work The Circle by Emanuel Gat alongside Colette Sadler’s RITUALIA before returning to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2019.

*Some links, including Amazon, Stageplays.com, ATG Tickets, LOVEtheatre, BTG Tickets, Ticketmaster, The Ticket Factory, LW Theatres and QuayTickets, are affiliate links for which BTG may earn a small fee at no extra cost to the purchaser.

Are you sure?