Information and tickets for Bayadère – The Ninth Life 2017

In March 2015, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance premiered a new theatre work, Bayadère – The Ninth Life, commissioned by the Royal Ballet Studio Programme and inspired by the ballet La Bayadère. Drawing on Marius Petipa’s original choreography and the stories of the first real ‘temple dancers’ to visit Europe, Shobana illuminates the West’s fascination with the myth of the Orient. She examines how this legacy has directly affected the Indian diaspora today, and how the story of La Bayadère relates to modern fantasies of East and West.

In the autumn of 2013, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance celebrated its 25th anniversary with a new commission for London’s prestigious Southbank Centre. Performed by world-class dancers, Strange Blooms proved to be propulsive and stimulating. The piece was inspired by the study of plants. Shobana focused on their cellular processes, their morphologies and patterns of growth, as registered in the lens of the time-lapse film.

Collaborations with an inspired choice of composers have always been the hallmark of the company, and Strange Blooms was no exception. Gabriel Prokofiev, composer, producer and DJ at the forefront of the UK classical music scene, shares a bold distinctive take on past and present.

In 2015, Strange Blooms was revived and presented as part of a double bill with Material Men.

In Episode 1, Guardian Dance Critic Sanjoy Roy talks to Shobana and composer Michael Nyman about their collaboration on Configurations from 1989.

The original Configurations was commissioned by The Place, London. This, in turn, was developed from an earlier solo work, Miniatures, with commissioned music by Michael Nyman, in 1988. The work has shifted and changed, reflecting Shobana’s growth as a choreographer. This re-imagining of Configurations in 2012, isn’t about re-staging or reviving; it’s rather a statement of affection for the music and the potential for adventure in Bharata Natyam.

Configurations was presented in 2012 as part of Classic Cut – an intriguing double bill exploring past and present. And again in 2013 in a double bill with Strange Blooms.

In Episode 1, Guardian Dance Critic Sanjoy Roy talks to Shobana and composer Michael Nyman about their collaboration on Configurations from 1989.

Bruise Blood’s starting point was the music. Shobana had met vocal performer Shlomo (“the human beatbox”) and discovered a shared interest in the music of Steve Reich and were taken by his piece Come Out, 1966. Come Out uses words spoken by a young black Harlem man in the 1960s; he had been wrongly arrested and had to let out his ‘bruise blood’ to show he had been assaulted by the police. His blood was the only evidence available to him. From that specific event Shobana took a more general point: the idea that someone offering up their own body as evidence is also what dancers do.

Although Reich moves quickly from documentary to the abstract, Shobana connects to the evidential nature of dance, which shows its tangled history through the machinery of the human body.

“The anxiety that informs the current debate about Asian youth seems all consuming. For me, this anxiety found its perfect echo in a fragment of music (featuring a much-manipulated soprano voice) that Scanner played me in his studio.”

“At about the same time, I was reading Londonstani by Gautam Malkani, and while it dealt with a slice of British Asian life in Southall, what I connected to most was the mixture of linguistic codes (texting, slang, Punjabi, etc.) which he used to create the voice of his main character.”
— Shobana Jeyasingh

Faultline dance resource
Workshops information

Listen to Surface Tension – the podcast from Shobana Jeyasingh Dance.
In Episode 2, Guardian Dance Critic Sanjoy Roy talks to Shobana, author Gautam Malkani, composers Scanner and Errollyn Wallen and fillmaker Pete Gomes about their collaboration on Faultline from 2007.