DANCE NEWS: Hofesh Shechter becomes Artist-in-Residence of Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart
Beginning in the summer of 2021, Hofesh Shechter is going to contribute one work to the repertoire of Gauthier Dance each year: two world premieres for the company plus the performing rights for a full-length programme.
The first production will be Swan Cake, a new creation for the bill Swan Lakes, which also features world premieres by Marie Chouinard, Marco Goecke, and Cayetano Soto and was meant to open this year's COLOURS International Dance Festival. The festival has since been rescheduled for 2022, but the premiere of Swan Lakes on June 24, 2021, will still kick off the Gauthier Dance Summertime programme. Swan Cake will focus on the dark undercurrent of the ballet classic. Instead of the beautiful, the pure and the clean, Shechter shows us driven people who have no home, no place, no choice – but desires, fantasies and dreams. And in doing so, he makes us understand that beneath the surface, a very unique kind of beauty is just waiting to come to light.
For The Seven Sins, Eric Gauthier has invited seven famous choreographers to translate one of the deadly sins into dance – including Hofesh Shechter. The vicious line-up is completed by Aszure Barton, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Sharon Eyal & Gai Behar, Marco Goecke, Marcos Morau, and Sasha Waltz. The premiere is scheduled for March 26, 2022.
We are not revealing the title of the third work just yet. But this much we can say: Hofesh Shechter will entrust Gauthier Dance with a full-length piece that has only been danced by his own Hofesh Shechter Company to date – and will open the 5th COLOURS International Dance Festival in the summer of 2023.
Hofesh Shechter
Choreographer Hofesh Shechter OBE is recognised as one of the most exciting artists making stage work today, renowned for composing atmospheric musical scores to compliment the unique physicality of his movement. His dual artistic talent was shaped by his years as a dancer with the legendary Batsheva Dance Company and his studies of music in Paris. It was also music that originally brought him to London – as the drummer of the band The Human Beings. Once in the British capital, he launched his career as a choreographer and quickly rose to the top, acclaimed by critics and audiences alike for his dark, visceral dance universe. Since 2008, Shechter has headed the UK-based Hofesh Shechter Company. He is also an Associate Artist of Sadler’s Wells.
In 2018 Hofesh Shechter was awarded an honorary OBE for Services to Dance. In the same year, the company's first dance film, Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns, was broadcast by the BBC to great acclaim. In 2020, Hofesh Shechter Company was named the winner of the Fedora – VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Prize for Ballet for LIGHT: Bach Dances, in collaboration with Royal Danish Opera and co-directed by Hofesh Shechter and John Fulljames.