The two figures on stage in the new Advanced position of Sadler’s Wells in East London cut very different silhouettes. The artistic director and executive co -director, Sir Alistair Spalding, channels of the informal joint room in an open blue shirt, dark cotton pants and brown oxford shoes; The dancer and choreographer Jules Cunningham wears Dr Martens boots and drain pipe pants, the hair is cut on the sides and the upper part, long at the back. One stands slightly rigid, hands in the pockets; The other, which was once described as “half of Giacometti’s Walk manHalf Rubber Band ”: Stretches and flexes as if he were ready to act. Two uniforms, a mission.
When we are, the opening of the theater on the edge of the Olympic Park is just a few weeks away. Cunningham – Among the first of the company’s newly appointed associated artists, it will be one of the first artists to act there with a double bill entitled Crow/Palomas. Spalding’s behavior denies an iconoclastic spirit. In his two decades to the helm he has transformed Sadler’s wells. His first movement to become an artistic director in 2004 was to convert a theater that organized ballet and opera, along with popular performance groups such as Stomp, in a contemporary dance place that created his own work. “I looked back when Sadler’s Wells was very successful, and it was mainly in the era of Lilian Baylis, because work was being created: the artists were in the building. It was the space of a creator. ”
In 2005, he named a new section of associated artists, including Akram Khan, Jonzi D, Matthew Bourne, Balletboyz and Wayne McGregor. In the later years, he added more names to that list: Sharon Eyal, Hofesh Shechter and Crystal Pite among them. Before the opening of the new theater, last year brought seven more, including Cunningham. “You must continue thinking about what is happening now, what a new generation says, and continue on that path,” says Spalding.
Jules Cunningham had a working class education in Liverpool and trained at the Rambert School in London before working with Merce Cunningham (without a relationship) Dance Company and Michael Clark Company. In 2017, Cunningham branched on his account with Julie Cunningham & Company and a piece in Barbican called to be me, in which Cunningham danced to the poetry of Kae Tempest. In an interview that year, Cunningham spoke about a frustration with the dance: “[When I first joined a company] For six months I danced the sleeping beauty in a tutu, with my hair in a bun. I was a fairy and I didn’t feel at all […] I am gay, and my experience in the world is not represented on the dance stage. ”
Today, they say: “I suppose that the life of being a dancer is like assuming the vision and physicality of another person. I was right at a point where I thought: “I don’t want to make another person’s movement.” And in Kae’s poem there was the line ‘Time to be now’, which was like, ‘ok, it’s time to start the next chapter’ “.
At that time, Spalding sought to commission three works to mark 20 years of the Sadler’s Wells building in Islington, and asked Cunningham to create one of them. Cunningham piece, myHe was inspired by Monique Wittig’s novel The lesbian bodyDescribed in Wittig’s New York Times The obituary as a story in which “Lesbian lovers literally invade the bodies of the other as an act of love.” For Cunningham, the piece was another great personal step: “Obviously, I have been a strange person my whole life, but having that is present in what I was doing I felt like something really massive to me. He [also grew out of] My feeling of seeing dancing throughout the years where each relationship portrayed is very direct. Even if it does not mean. I really wanted to change that. “
His next job for Spalding, How do we get here? (2023), I saw them dancing with their partner Merseysider Mel C. Some Spice Girls fans went to each show. “There were people who generally would never come to dance,” says Cunningham, “so many people came due to their musical interests. And I think that is good, the cross -cross and experience new things. Those were good times.”
The new theater, which would not exist without the legacy of the 2012 Olympic Games, is about finding new audiences for contemporary dance in a London area and the United Kingdom that is traditionally not well served by the places of the arts. “Sadler’s Wells has, as well as an international and national audience, a very local audience also,” says Spalding. “Obviously there are many people from Hackney who come to our [Islington] Theater right now, but we want people from the other side of the Olympic Park that come here too. We have designed programming so that there are places where people who have never seen contemporary dance [can come]. “National and international companies will visit and the theater will also house the new Rose choreographic school And the Hip-Hop Training Center Academy Breakin ‘Convention. Whatever the side of the theater from which you approach, you will dazzle the giant neon signs that read “You are welcome.”
The stage is the same size as Islington, which means that the shows can transfer between the two; But the auditorium in the new theater is significantly smaller (550 seats compared to 1,500), creating a more intimate atmosphere more appropriate for smaller productions. The seat can be retracted and space can be used in different configurations or as an immersive place. The opening season will see Sharon Eyal transform it into a club’s dance floor and Mette IngvartSen recreate a skating park.
For Cunningham’s RAVEN/PigeonBaging by Cunningham, Harry Alexander, Matthias Sperling, Nafisah Baba and Yu-Chien Cheng, the staging will be final. The double bill is connected by American musicians and artists Queer Julius Eastman (1940-1990), a minimalist and contemporary composer of John Cage who died homeless, and Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016), a accordionist and central figure in central in The post-second electronic music of the World War. Both artists were open about sexuality, race and marginalized groups.
In the mid -1970s, Eastman acted in a work by Oliveros. Cunningham reinvents that moment in RAVENwhile Pigeon He is danced to the composition of Eastman “Guera Gay”. I have seen test clips
Pigeon And the movements are, well, very pigeons, I suggest Cunningham, for lack of a better adjective. The idea occurred during the closure: “I was walking in an hour that allowed you cars and less people. Pigeon. ”
About RAVENCunningham is more enigmatic, apart from agreeing that in terms of bird impressions it is less “crow”: “[Symbolically] The crows are generally quite dark, you know, ”says Cunningham. “There are so many things that are happening in the world that is unbearable to understand. So we have been thinking about how to sustain all the things that happen for us. ” There are worse places to begin that the new Spalding ark.
Crow/Pigeons de Jules Cunningham and Julie Cunningham & Company is located in Sadler’s Wells East on March 27 and 28, as part of Van Cleef & Arpels dance reflections. How do we get here? It is available for free at Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage from March 10 to 31, Sadlerswells.com