Site Based Archives - Shobana Jeyasingh Dance

Counterpoint

Posted on: January 8th, 2025 by sjAdmin

In August 2023 we took over the Somerset House courtyard and fountains with a revival of our hugely successful 2010 production, Counterpoint.

Inspired by the stunning neo-classical courtyard and the dynamic fountains, Shobana Jeyasingh created a dramatic, intense and water-inspired dance through the fountains, performed by 22 powerful women. Set to a pulsating score by Cassiel, Counterpoint is a dramatic ten-minute journey of changing speeds, contrasting textures and shifting dynamics.

Produced by Shobana Jeyasingh Dance
Photos by Richard Haughton, Robert Piwko
Supported by Inside Out Festival

TooMortal

Posted on: August 9th, 2021 by sjdEditor

Originally performed in 2012, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance will be performing TooMortal in London for just four performances!

TooMortal is a beautiful and mesmerising work strikingly set within historic churches.

Dancing within the pews, six women dressed in flame red weave a story that moves sharply between turbulence and tension. Are they charting a journey from cradle to grave? Or cast adrift on a wooden sea?

The TooMortal soundtrack by sound artist Cassiel remixes Tenebrae Responsories by James MacMillan, creating an atmosphere of calm solemnity infused with tense, sometimes ominous, flavours.

TooMortal was premiered at the Venice Dance Biennale in 2012 and remains one of our most critically acclaimed works. It was chosen as one of the 20 best dances of the 20th Century by The Guardian.

St Pancras Church, London 2021

Friday 24th September at 7pm

Saturday 25th September at 5pm

Saturday 25th September at 6.30pm

Saturday 25th September at 8pm

To buy tickets for all performances please click here

Kuopio Dance Festival, Finland 2021

13th October – 16th October at 7pm, 8pm and 9pm

www.kuopiodancefestival.fi

For our London performances of TooMortal we are using a Pay What You Can model. On the booking page you will find a range of prices to choose from including a recommended price per ticket. We hope this will make our performances to be as accessible as possible.

Please note this is a standing only event. We’ll be letting people into the venue on a first come, first served basis. You’ll be expected to stand for the duration of the performance (20 minutes). A limited number of seats are available for those who need it. Please contact Zöe at admin@shobanajeyasingh.co.uk if you require a seat.

Our priority is the health and wellbeing of artists, audiences and colleagues so we will be communicating and abiding by the the latest Covid-19 guidance at the time of the performances.

Contagion

Posted on: January 22nd, 2018 by sjdEditor

★★★★★ The Times
‘When Shobana Jeyasingh is firing on all cylinders there is hardly another UK choreographer who can touch her.’

★★★★★ Culture Whisper
‘Shobana Jeyasingh’s fierce intelligence and outstanding ability to tell a story and convey emotions through her meticulous choreography.’

★★★★★ Broadway World
‘Contagion is sharp and precise, but also imaginatively inventive’

Contagion was featured in three of the best dance highlights of 2018:

‘It showed Jeyasingh at her most humane but also at her most uncompromisingly original and intelligent.’
Guardian 2018 dance highlights

‘A challenging and moving, not to mention overdue, act of remembrance to these Great War dead.’
Evening Standard best dance of 2018

‘Shobana Jeyasingh’s fierce intelligence and outstanding ability to tell a story and convey emotions through her meticulous choreography.’

Culture Whisper best dance of 2018

——-

Contagion was co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW, the UK’s arts programme for the First World War centenary.

Contagion commemorates the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which killed more people than the First World War itself. The piece is inspired by the nature and spread of the flu virus, the unseen enemy that mankind was battling within, while engaging in more conventional warfare in the world outside. The striking work of the Austrian artist Egon Schiele, who fell victim to the Spanish flu, forms a visual footnote to the piece.

Set to an atmospheric soundscape, this dance installation with digital visuals echoes the scientific features of a virus – rapid, random and constantly shape-shifting. Eight female dancers contort and mutate as they explore both the resilience and the vulnerability of the human body.

The performance was presented in unusual venues, many with connections to the First World War.

The work was accompanied by an innovative learning programme, bringing the public closer to a subject that remains relevant today.

Watch the live streamed performance from The Great Hall, Winchester

études

Posted on: July 21st, 2016 by sjAdmin

In Autumn 2016, Shobana created études, an eight-minute contemporary dance piece responding to The Courtauld Gallery’s exhibition Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement. The exhibition explored Rodin’s fascination with dance and bodies through experimental sculptures the artist made towards the end of his life. Performed in silence, and in the exhibition space, études translates Rodin’s sculptural poses into graceful contemporary dance. The work explores the boundaries of balance, extreme poses and curve within movement.

Outlander

Posted on: June 18th, 2016 by sjAdmin

Outlander was created specifically for the Palladian Refectory at the San Giorgio monastery, the home of one of Europe’s greatest paintings, the monumental ‘Wedding at Cana’ by Paolo Veronese. The piece was commissioned by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini for the prestigious Venice Biennale Danza 2016.

Shobana draws inspiration from Veronese’s exuberant masterpiece which features a contemporary, multicultural wedding feast. Performed by three company dancers, it is a closely observed series of solos that shift tantalisingly between reflection and speed. The work contrasts the cool power of Shobana’s choreography with the classical beauty of Venice. Each dancer becomes a character who brings their own mixture of strangeness and familiarity to Veronese’s celebrations on a specially designed catwalk lit by Sander Loonen and with a baroque inspired soundscape by Scanner.

Listen to Surface Tension – the podcast from Shobana Jeyasingh Dance.
In Episode 3, Guardian Dance Critic Sanjoy Roy talks to Shobana about staging Outlander.

Trespass R&D

Posted on: July 21st, 2015 by sjAdmin

Trespass explored the emerging possibilities for relationships between human behaviour and intelligent environments; the ways in which creative and emotional impulses might interact with the architecture and structures around us.

This was a collaboration with academics from the Department of Informatics, Faculty of Natural & Mathematical Sciences at King’s College London; The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL; and Shobana Jeyasingh Dance.

Trespass was part of an ongoing partnership between Shobana Jeyasingh Dance and the Cultural Institute at King’s College London. It evolved from the Knowledge Producers programme, produced by the Cultural Institute, to support collaborations between artists and academics at King’s.

TooMortal (2012)

Posted on: July 21st, 2012 by sjAdmin

A beautiful and mesmerising work strikingly set within historic churches.

Dancing within the pews, six women dressed in flame red weave a story that moves between power and quiet reflection. Are they charting a journey from cradle to grave? Or cast adrift on a wooden sea?

The TooMortal soundtrack by sound artist Cassiel remixes Tenebrae Responsories by James MacMillan, creating an atmosphere of calm solemnity infused with tense, sometimes ominous, flavours.

Listen to Surface Tension – the podcast from Shobana Jeyasingh Dance.
In Episode 3, Guardian Dance Critic Sanjoy Roy talks to Shobana about staging TooMortal.

Pop Idle

Posted on: March 1st, 2007 by sjdEditor

Pop Idle was created for the Move-me booth (www.move-me.com) created for Ricochet dance company by Katrina McPherson and Simon Fildes. Move-me was a specially constructed video booth placed in various public spaces and free to use.

Inside the booth, the user selects their choice of choreographer and then, guided by instructions, creates a unique dance that is captured on video within the confines of the booth. These video dances were then added to the to move-me.com website (requires Adobe Flash Play to view).

Instructions were provided by some of the world’s most innovative and exciting dance-makers – Rafael Bonachela, Nigel Charnock, Jonzi D, Shobana Jeyasingh, New Art Club, Stephen Petronio, Kirstie Simson and Deborah Hay.

Move-me was co-produced by Ricochet Dance Productions and Goat Media, from the original idea by Simon Fildes and Katrina McPherson. It is an Arts Council England Capture4 commission, sponsored by Calumet Photographic and co-funded by Scottish Arts Council Lottery Funds, the Moose Foundation, Alt-W, New Media Scotland and Sadlers Wells.

Foliage Chorus

Posted on: December 14th, 2004 by sjdEditor

Foliage Chorus was a site-specific work created in 2004 for the opening of the new artsdepot building in north London, animating the foyer and balconies of the building.