Dance company, Yorke Dance Project, will be joining up with five ballet companies this autumn for Kenneth MacMillan: a National Celebration at The Royal Opera House.
The dance company joins The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet and Scottish Ballet to celebrate the life of master choreographer Kenneth MacMillan on the 25th anniversary of his death.
Over two weeks from 13th October some of the choreographer’s most celebrated and enduring works will be performed on a four venue tour, alongside a programme of talks exploring his legacy. The tour will present a mixed programme from Yorke Dance Project called Rewind Forward.
On 26th and 27th October and 1st November, Yorke Dance Project will be performing Sea of Troubles at The Royal Opera House.
Sea of Troubles
At The Royal Opera House, Yorke Dance Project will present MacMillan’s rarely-seen 1988 work Sea of Troubles which artistic director Yolande Yorke-Edgell revived for the company last autumn.
The staging will involve six performers and is set to music by 20th century masters Anton Webern and Bohuslav Martin?.
The piece takes the death of Hamlet’s father as its starting point. With the appearance of his father’s ghost and Hamlet’s realisation of the need for revenge, his tormented world becomes a nightmare.
Sea of Troubles was originally a gift from MacMillan to Dance Advance, an ensemble of former members of The Royal Ballet.
Further information
Kenneth MacMillan: a National Celebration is an initiative by Kevin O’Hare, Director of The Royal Ballet to bring together Britain’s leading ballet companies under one roof to demonstrate the impact of MacMillan’s vision on dance in this country.
Rewind Forward’s four works are: Kenneth MacMillan’s Sea of Troubles; Robert Cohan’s latest work Twilight, a new version of 1979’s Songs, Lamentations and Praises danced by the entire company to music by Vivaldi; Self by Charlotte Edmonds, the first participant of The Royal Ballet Young Choreographer Programme, inspired by the famous trio from MacMillan’s Manon to Donna McKevitt’s commissioned score for four solo cellos, girl treble and electronica; and Yolande Yorke-Edgell’s Untethered, a work about self-discovery and transformation set to music by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider.
For more information, visit www.roh.org.uk/about/macmillan-celebration.
