Royal New Zealand Ballet - Mixed Bill: A PASSING CLOUD

Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House, Bow Street, Covent Garden, London
Royal New Zealand Ballet - Mixed Bill: A PASSING CLOUD image
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Event has ended
This event ended on Saturday 21st of November 2015
Admission
£8 - 25
Venue Information
Royal Opera House
Bow Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 9DD
Nearest Tube/Rail Stations
Covent Garden 0.06 miles

Royal New Zealand Ballet, the country’s national ballet, has won an international reputation for their exciting, experimental repertory – a reputation borne out in this new mixed programme.

Bringing to the stage new voices and different stories, A Passing Cloud, is a programme of four contemporary works, three of which were expressly choreographed for the RNZB, revealing the breadth of the company’s vision.
Three of the works tell compelling stories about New Zealand’s identity, its place in the Pacific, its heritage and increasingly diverse culture, and, in this Anzac centenary year, its wartime past.

Javier de Frutos
European Première of Javier de Frutos’s piece inspired by the Pacific: The Anatomy of a Passing Cloud is a celebration of the region’s vibrant colours and music. London-based Venezuelan choreographer Javier De Frutos created The Anatomy of a Passing Cloud for Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2013, to mark the company’s 60th anniversary. De Frutos intended the work as a ‘gift to New Zealand’, and explores Pasifika imagery and culture through dance and music.
This is also a rare opportunity for UK audiences to experience the diversity of Pasifika music and language, from the resort sounds of ukuleles and close harmonies to the power of traditional Cook Island drumming and chants, and spoken te reo Māori.

Leading New Zealand choreographers Andrew Simmons and Neil Ieremia present pieces inspired by their homeland’s contribution to the First World War.

Andrew Simmons

Andrew Simmons’s Dear Horizon takes place in the half light of no man’s land. With a soaring score by Gareth Farr, incorporating a virtuoso solo cello alongside the brass band, the mood is of quiet desperation and the inevitability of parting and loss. Now based in Dresden, Andrew Simmons danced with the RNZB from 2004 -8. His deeply touching choreography is characterised by its elegance, musicality and restraint.

Neil Ieremia

The Battle of Passchendaele in October 1917 was New Zealand’s worst wartime loss of life, with more than 800 men killed in a single day. Neil Ieremia’s Passchendaele, inspired by Warrant Officer Dwayne Bloomfield’s epic tone poem of the same name, is a 12 minute explosion of energy and raw emotion. Director of the internationally feted Black Grace dance company, Neil Ieremia is a Samoan New Zealander, and this work incorporates the flavour of that well-known prelude to battle that is closely associated with New Zealand and other Pacific nations on the sports field, the haka.

Andonis Foniadakis

Completing the programme is Greek dancer and choreographer Andonis Foniadakis’s Selon désir (According to desire), created for Geneva Ballet in 2004. This work uses mass movement to explore the contrast between heavenly inspiration and earthy energy, and is set to the opening choruses from Bach’s St Matthew Passion and St John Passion.
This mixed bill of work A Passing Cloud can be seen in Leeds, Canterbury and the Linbury Studio Theatre of the Royal Opera House in London.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s programme can be seen as a distillation of contemporary New Zealand’s culture and some of the most powerful influences at play in society today. There are fascinating juxtapositions and questions – about Pasifika culture viewed from outside and within, about the power of dance as a commemoration, and about a small company with a long and distinguished history and a unique voice, proudly representing a small country on the world stage.

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