Is there a single dance talent that hasn’t gravitated towards Sadler’s Wells in the last decade? Maybe a few, but the theatre’s list of associate artists and companies is nonetheless heading towards world domination. At the Wells’s annual press conference today, artistic director Alistair Spalding announced that he’d not only signed up Rosas and Tanztheater Wuppertal as new international associates, but that his theatre would be involved in a new co-production with the stellar Russian ballerina Natalia Osipova.
Osipova will be dancing in a triple bill of new contemporary dance works by Russell Maliphant, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Arthur Pita and as an additional headline, her new partner Sergei Polunin will be dancing alongside her in two of the three works.
Both dancers were at the conference today, fielding questions about their relationship (yes it is “romantic”) and speaking of their shared determination to experience new choreography while still at the physical peak of their careers. To be accurate, this Wells programme is not Osipova’s first venture into modern dance, nor is it her first encounter with Pita and Cherkaoui, since both choreographers contributed works to the Solo for Two programme, which she danced with Ivan Vasiliev at London’s Coliseum in 2014.
Even so, there is plenty for dance fans to get excited about. Aside from the interest factor of Polunin, who has hardly been seen on a UK stage since his sudden exit from the Royal Ballet, this programme promises to show off new and very different facets of their combined talent.
Osipova, as we already know, has an instinct for the subtle sensuality of Cherkaoui’s choreography and in Pita’s previous work Facada, she was darkly, mordantly funny. Russell Maliphant’s new duet for her and Polunin may hopefully be as revelatory for the two dancers as his creations proved to be for Sylvie Guillem, and the new work that Pita has planned for them, a “dance prequel” to Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, sounds rich in all manner of deviant dramatic potential.
It’s important for Polunin and Osipova to give this project whatever preparation and rehearsal time it needs for it to become a genuine creative collaboration. But one obvious concern, regarding Osipova in particular, is that it adds another major commitment to her already busy career. Alongside her current contract with the Royal, the ballerina has been dancing with ABT during the past year, guesting at La Scala and she has just been announced as a guest with the Bolshoi. This season she’s missed a chunk of performances at the Royal due to injury and illness – and spreading her energies even more thinly could be an issue both for her, and for her loyal, patient fans.
Back to the Wells, however, where the rest of the 2016 season may be less newsy but is full of interest. There’s a recent work by Bartabas, the French horse whisperer of dance, which comes with a cast of four donkeys, a horse and a flamenco dancer. A new piece by Javier de Frutos for Ballet Boyz promises a spiky, sexy chemistry; English National Ballet make a kind of history with their programme of all-female choreographers; the excellent Crystal Pite presents the UK premiere of her work Betroffenheit and the two geniuses of British lighting design, Lucy Carter and Michael Hulls combine with composer Nitin Sawhney to create an “immersive” dance event, with no actual dancers.
This is a glitzy roster, but it’s good to see that the Wells remain mindful of their duty to the independent sector. Their Wild Card series, in which guest artists are invited to programme new work, stays in place, as does their mentorship project, the Summer University. A new production has been commissioned from the theatre’s new wave associate Alexander Whitley – although this scheme to nurture emerging artists could, I think, be made a more visible and broader plank of the theatre’s activities.
When Spalding first laid out his stall as artistic director in 2005, there were plenty who doubted his ability to sustain a year-round programme of dance in a theatre the size of the Wells. But the numbers have been impressive. With just 10% of its annual revenue coming from Arts Council England, the Wells has commissioned or produced 21 new works during the last year and has reached an audience of over 470,000.
Of course, London benefits most, and smaller venues can feel as though the Wells is sucking up more than its fair share of talent and oxygen. Yet a proportion of the works shown on the Sadler’s Wells stage do tour elsewhere: last year 15 productions went to 78 cities in the UK and abroad and it’s because the theatre is so ambitious an organisation that it generates a powerful buzz for the art from. Back in the days before Spalding, press conferences about modern dance were almost never considered news.
