Specially curated by The Place, Spring Loaded is a season of dance work challenging preconceptions about what dance is. 17 nights, 24 choreographers, 3 premières, showcase a diverse mix of UK and international dance makers.
The season opens with a world première of Easy Rider by Work Place artist Eva Recacha (Fri 25 April) looking at superstitious beliefs and practices in the pursuit of happiness, drawing on observations of horoscopes readings, self-help manuals, old wives tales and religion in her native Spain.
Southpaw Dance Company (Tue 29 April) presents a double-bill of work. Based in the North East of England, choreographer and dance artist Robby Graham combines Bboying, contemporary technique and contact practices in Riots, a short and high energy piece inspired by protests against rising social unrest around the world. Men on a Mission looks at the cliques and artificial glamour associated with recreational drugs.
Work Place artist Vera Tussing's (Wed 7 May) new piece T-Dance, for four dancers connected by wooden poles held in place only by physical tension, forms a ‘moving sculpture’.
James Wilton (Sat 10 May), who created a piece for the Rugby League World Cup 2013, presents Last Man Standing, which focuses on human behaviour when facing danger. Wilton blends martial arts, break dancing and capoeira to create choreography for a cast of six.
Joe Moran and Dance Art Foundation (Tue 13 May) present Assembly, a triple bill of contrasting works choreographed by Moran: Decommission, a new solo performed by Moran, an experiment in intimacy and risk; Obverse (commissioned for The Place Prize for dance, sponsored by Bloomberg 2012) pursues formalism in choreography; and masculinity comes under inspection in the third.
Work Place artists Igor and Moreno (Thu 15 & Fri 16 May) new work Idiot-Syncrasy draws on their folk Sardinian and Basque tradition to create a contemporary take on what most ancient dances share, exploring the importance of commitment to a cause and perseverance in trying to change the world despite sometimes feeling like idiots for attempting it.
Artsadmin Associate Artist 2012-14 and winner of Best Design, Evening Standard Theatre Awards, Mamoru Iriguchi (Wed 28 May) introduces Projector/Conjector, a Swan-Lake-inspired love duet between performers with a TV and a projector attached to their heads; One Man Show, a Place Prize commission, featuring a solo performer and his digital doppelgängers; and GRAFT, which has been specially commissioned by The Place for Spring Loaded 2014.
Trailblazers Showcase – Exposure (Sat 31 May), a mixed bill incorporating film, installation, abstract choreography, dancehall, reggae and Guinean dance theatre with live music, offers a tour through the far reaches of African diaspora dance as it is being explored and expressed today.
The final month of Spring Loaded opens with Bboy Mickael ‘Marso’ Riviere (Wed 4 June), Guy Nader, and Salah El Brogy (Protein’s Border Tales), who have co-created two brand new duets. In Match Guy Nader and Marso construct a place where destruction and renewal, devastation and beauty are never far apart. Salah El Brogy and Marso present Halfway to The Other Side, part spiritual journey, part absurd reflection on our human tendency to repeat, replicate, endlessly circle through life and turn time on its head.
Six dancers from the Hofesh Shechter Company become choreographers in this third incarnation of In Good Company (Fri 6 June). They have created five new and very different dance pieces and one film especially for this Spring Loaded project. This year In Good Company choreographers are Maëva Berthelot, Sam Coren, Frédéric Despierre, Bruno Guillore, Kim Kohlman, Sita Ostheimer.
French born choreographer Philippe Blanchard (Tue 10 June), together with Italian filmmaker twins Luca and Gabriele Stifani, has created an installation piece, This is that. As much spoken dance as danced dance, they question discrepancies between what we see and how we interpret images and appearances.
In HIDE Deborah Light (Fri 13 June) layers movement, image, sound and text to put the multiplicity of human nature into question. A cast of three female dancers Jo Fong (Rosas, DV8), Eddie Ladd (Volcano, Brith Gof) and Rosalind Hâf Brooks (Earthfall) are brought together in a stark environment.
The final show of the season is a three-screen cinematic dance event called Witness, which has been created by Jo Fong (Sat 14 June). The piece crosses art forms and explores the themes of portraiture and the representation of women in art, dance, and the line between performance and reality.
Each choreographer has been chosen because they are established in their practice, they are at the point in their career where they are making vital, exciting and valuable work. They are making work that demands to be seen.
Eddie Nixon, Theatre and Artist Development Director, The Place, said, “We watch a lot of performance and we are convinced that these people and these projects are the most exciting, new things out there. They might be people you’ve not heard of yet.
"This is about the future of dance, to help both the artists and audiences make that journey away from things they are familiar with. Spring Loaded is the arena where brilliant artists of the next decade can showcase their work.”