Contemporary dance company National Dance Company Wales (NDCWales) brings a heartfelt double bill full of raw emotion and energy for their Sadler’s Wells East debut in September with Blue | Glas. Theo Clinkard’s beloved Ordinary Courage is restaged for a new generation, and Olivier Award-nominated Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Alesandra Seutin makes a new work for the repertory company, titled Untamed.
This arresting double bill from NDCWales comes under the helm of new artistic director Bakani Pick-Up, celebrating Wales’ finest dancers in works that explore the deepest elements of the human psyche and experience. Ordinary Courage, originally made for Clinkard’s own company in 2012, offers a reflection on grief and loss set to a haunting classical soundtrack comprised of Scarlatti and Bach.
Choreographer Theo Clinkard said that Ordinary Courage was his first and most personal work, drawing on his own experience of loss:“It’s a work that uses the body to talk about our attempts to navigate the uneven terrain of grief, the human need for connection and the potential for joy.
Performance offers a beautiful space to reflect collectively with fellow audience members, while dance, for centring the moving body, can be incredibly articulate on this subject, as we watch we can feel the leaden weight, the shortness of breath or the healing capacity of touch.”
Alesandra Seutin makes a visceral new work for NDCWales rooted in the human desire to run. It is a journey of awakening, shedding, and rebirth, that celebrates the courage required to become who we are meant to be. Untamed combines athletic, commanding dance with a driving soundtrack that includes traditional Welsh instruments and ancestral voices to leave audiences breathless.
Choreographer Alesandra Seutin said:“Untamed is inspired by the athleticism of runners and the internal mind game of the race in relation to our own lives. The dancers as spirit children (inspired by Ben Okri’s “Famished Road”) return to the game of life and remain on earth to discover their own struggles and go into a confrontation with all that seeks to tame them. They stumble, they rise and remember, through fire. Through sweat. Through communion with one another and with forces older than memory, they will be broken apart only to discover what cannot be broken. They are brought to the edge only to find a new beginning.”
Blue | Glas will perform at Sadler’s Wells East from Thursday 24 September – Saturday 26 September. Tickets available from sadlerswells.com. The mixed bill is part of NDCWales’ tour of England and Wales this September and October. Further dates and details can be found at ndcwales.co.uk.
