Viviana Durante Company today announces the full cast for Seven Deadly Sins at Wilton’s Music Hall, a brand-new restaging of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s ballet chanté choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan. The production is directed by ballet legend Viviana Durante and developed in association with Deborah MacMillan.
Joining Royal Ballet Principal Laura Morera and ‘the spectacular crowd-surfing tragi-comedienne’ Meow Meow will be First Soloist of The Royal Ballet Melissa Hamilton, playing the Female Deportee. Melissa is the winner of numerous awards over her career including Outstanding Female Performance (Classical) at the 2009 Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards and gold medal in the International Seoul Ballet Competition in 2011.
Principal of The Royal Ballet Nehemiah Kish will also join the cast as the Male Deportee; having trained at the National Ballet of Canada, the American moved to the Royal Danish Ballet in 2008 and has been Principal Dancer at The Royal Ballet since 2010.
Brazilian Jose Alves, recipient of the 2018 Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Outstanding Male Classical Dancer, will also join them as the Older Client; his career has spanned over a decade, seeing him rise to Senior Artist in Ballet Black, with whom he performed in Viviana Durante Company’s Kenneth MacMillan: Steps Back in Time in 2018.
Fusing ballet with satirical song, Seven Deadly Sins tells the story of Anna, an only daughter who is sent out to make her family’s fortune, dancing her way through seven American cities and encountering a sin in each one that stands in the way of her success. She faces an internal struggle with every encounter as her two opposing personalities clash; Morera will play ‘dancing Anna’, the open-hearted, creative beauty, whilst Meow Meow portrays ‘singing Anna’, the sensible bourgeois girl so at odds with her other side.
This powerful new restaging of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s extraordinary version of Seven Deadly Sins will include scenes only seen before in a 1984 televised performance. Set in an immigration facility, these include a poignant and beautiful MacMillan pas de deux for two deportees, performed by Hamilton and Kish and set to music from the Threepenny Opera.
Seven Deadly Sins is at Wilton’s Music Hall 8th – 18th May 2019.
