Weeks after the announcement that Caroline Finn will be joining the company as the new Artistic Director, National Dance Company Wales will be the first UK company to commission Jeroen Verbruggen.
Belgian choreographer Verbruggen will work at the end of August on a new piece, A Mighty Wind, to première at Dance City in Newcastle upon Tyne on 3 October.
As his recent re-interpretation of Nutcracker for Le Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève in November 2014 demonstrated, Verbruggen’s work is characterised "by fantasy elements, edgy in style and with high energy movement". In A Mighty Wind, Verbruggen aims to explore "the concept of ‘rock chic’, drawing on the experience of a stadium rock concert, combined with exploration of wind as a force and a catalyst for change".
A Mighty Wind will be performed alongside the NDCWales repertoire of Walking Mad and Tuplet, which toured across Wales and the UK earlier this year. The three works will visit a range of UK venues throughout autumn including Newcastle, Poole, Hereford, Newtown, Doncaster, Cardiff Dance Festival and Brecon.
As part of the autumn tour, the company will be rolling out a school and group workshops programme. There will be opportunities for audiences to see the dance class prepare before show in their warm-up, witness the dance pieces being created and various talks include a post-show talk with new Artistic Director Caroline Finn at the Lighthouse in Poole.
NDCWales will continue its programme of schools and family interactive matinées at the Dance House in Cardiff Bay and on tour, where young people join in with the dancers on stage as well as watch one of the pieces.
Rehearsal director Lee Johnston said, “last year we performed on the iconic steps of Aberystwyth University ahead of the performance at Aberystwyth Arts Centre. The pop-up performance went viral and showed that dance and theatre is not bound by four walls and that we all love to dance, inside, outside, whatever the weather! Tell us your iconic places and we will aim to perform there.”
NDCWales’s home, The Dance House, will be one of the main venues for the first Cardiff Dance Festival this November, hosting performances by visiting companies as well as the Company’s own work.
In partnership with English National Ballet, NDCWales has been running weekly dance sessions for people with Parkinson's at the Dance House. These sessions will continue this autumn in response to high levels of demand and participants reporting health improvements as a result.
One of the success stories for the NDCWales Associates training programme for young dancers is Josie Sinnadurai from Brecon, who trained as an Associate and has now joined the company as an Apprentice Dancer along with Ed Hygill, who grew up in Chester and new dancer David Pallant, who returns to Britain this summer after being a part of Nanine Linning Dance Company in Germany.
Paul Kaynes, Chief Executive, said, “our aim is to show people just how exciting dance can be and raise the profile of dance across Wales and beyond. We have superb dancers—from Wales, the rest of the UK and across Europe—who are excellent ambassadors for the vibrancy of the dance scene in Wales."