This year’s Sadler's Wells programme, on the Waterfront Stage from Thursday 17 to Sunday 20 July 2014, features dance highlights performed by 50 dancers from the UK and abroad, including the English National Ballet and the first ever performances by the National Youth Dance Company.
Sadler’s Wells also presents, for the first time at the festival, work by choreographer Akram Khan.
Opening Sadler’s Wells’s programme on Thursday 17 July at 8PM and 8:50PM will be German Cornejo and Gisela Galeassi. In dance partnership since 2011, World Tango Champions in 2003 and 2005, German & Gisela were the lead dancers in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's M¡longa and have also performed in Tango Fire at the Peacock Theatre.
On Friday 18 July at 5:30PM and Saturday 19 July at 12PM, Cuba's Ballet Revolución, a fusion of ballet, contemporary dance and hip hop performed to popular music from Shakira, Ricky Martin, Beyoncé and many more, arrives at Latitude as part of its 2014 European tour, which will take in the Peacock Theatre from Tuesday 7 to Saturday 25 October 2014.
Saturday 19 July’s programme includes the first of two double bills titled New Perspectives, at 2:30PM, which brings to the stage some of the world's up and coming dancers and companies.
Opening the first double bill is UK-based choreographer and dancer Sonia Sabri performing extracts from her work Ekalya, a celebration of classical Indian music and dance with a contemporary twist.
A Sanskrit word meaning solo, Ekalya, performed to live music on the sitar, harmonium and vocals, demonstrates the speed, precision and complex rhythms involved in classical kathak.
Completing the first double bill is James Cousins, winner of the inaugural New Adventures Choreographer Award, originally established in celebration of the director and choreographer Matthew Bourne’s 50th birthday in 2010.
Cousins presents an adaptation of his duet There We Have Been, which takes inspiration from the troubled relationships portrayed in Haruki Murakami's bestselling novel Norwegian Wood.
There We Have Been is an intimate glimpse into a secluded world of fragile dependency. This duet sees the two performers intensely folding, wrapping and balancing, with the female character never touching the floor.
On Sunday 20 July, Sadler’s Wells’s programme opens with English National Ballet returning to Latitude after the success of its Swan Lake performances in 2012.
ENB brings together a double bill of new work by the company’s dancers, including Van Le Ngoc’s Four Seasons performed to excerpts from the Vivaldi score of the same name and a new work by James Streeter titled In Living Memory... inspired by texts about the First World War.
Led by its Artistic Director, the internationally renowned ballerina Tamara Rojo, ENB aims to perform ballet anywhere, make innovative collaborations and exciting ways of honouring yet adding to traditional ballet.
Sunday 20 July’s New Perspectives second double bill showcases the creativity of young people and the inclusive dance talent Sadler’s Wells supports and presents. It will open with Candoco Dance Company, UK’s leading contemporary dance company made up of disabled and non-disabled dancers.
Candoco challenges perceptions of what dance is and who can dance. For its second appearance at Latitude, the company performs the duet Two for C by Javier de Frutos. Set to traditional Mexican ranchera music, the performances take place in an intimate domestic world where the use of Mexican wrestling masks reveals the deeper, darker forces at play.
Two for C is de Frutos’s (Cabaret and The Most Incredible Thing with the Pet Shop Boys) newest work for Candoco. Inspired by Tennessee Williams’s play Camino Real, the piece explores the turmoil of a couple trapped in a longstanding relationship, characterised by struggle and power games.
Candoco will present Close Encounters and Curious Encounters in the Lilian Baylis Studio on Sunday 16 and Monday 17 November 2014 as part of Sadler’s Wells’s =dance season, offering audiences the opportunity to learn more about the company through interactive extract performances, workshops and conversations. =dance is new series featuring some of the innovative work created and performed by deaf and disabled artists.
Completing the double bill and closing Sadler’s Wells’s programme on the Waterfront Stage are 11 dancers from the National Youth Dance Company (NYDC), performing a restaged excerpt of Vertical Road by the company’s current Guest Artistic Director and Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Akram Khan.
Founded in 2012 and hosted by Sadler’s Wells, the NYDC draws together some of the brightest young talent from across the country. Each year, 30 dancers aged 16 to 19 are selected from across England to form a new cohort within the Company and can stay with NYDC for up to three years.
One of Sadler’s Wells’s Associate Artists or visiting company directors is appointed Guest Artistic Director for each cohort, giving the members the opportunity to learn, create, rehearse and perform new and existing work for the theatre’s main stage and a UK tour, of which Latitude is part.
For more information on NYDC and the national tour, visit www.sadlerswells.com/national-youth-dance-company.