The National Ballet of Canada presents the UK premiere of Frontiers: Choreographers of Canada at Sadler’s Wells on Wednesday 2 – Sunday 6 October 2024. This triple bill includes works by three leading choreographers hailing from Canada: Crystal Pite’s Angels’ Atlas, Emma Portner’s islands and James Kudelka’s Passion.
Founded by Celia Franca in 1951 the company is renowned for its diverse repertoire ranging from traditional ballets to contemporary work. The company encourages the creation of new ballets as well as the development of Canadian choreographers. The company is returning to Sadler’s Wells for the first time since 2013 when they presented Alexei Ratmansky’s Romeo and Juliet.
Acclaimed choreographer and Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Crystal Pite presents her much-anticipated work Angels’ Atlas, created especially for the company, which originally premiered in Toronto in 2020. The Dora Award-winning ballet unfolds against a morphing wall of light that carries the illusion of depth and a sense of the natural world. The dancing body becomes a sign of humanity’s limitations within a vast, unknowable world. The ballet is set to original music by Owen Belton and choral pieces by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Morten Lauridsen.
Emma Portner’s islands is a sculptural duet for two women in which the dancers are joined, fusing their bodies together as one. The work is set to an eclectic compilation of music by contemporary artists and original music by Forest Swords, bringing together hip-hop, dub, guitar loops and electronic sampling for a rhythmic, avant-garde sound.
James Kudelka’s abstract ballet Passion which he created for Houston Ballet in 2013 is a love story set to the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano in D, Op. 61a. Two couples each stylistically unique – one classical, the other contemporary – weave within the corps-de-ballet, evoking complex relationships of passion.
Crystal Pite is a Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist
The National Ballet of Canada Frontiers: Choreographers of Canada Pite/ Kudelka/ Portner is part of Sadler’s Wells year-round Ballet with attitude programme.
