The Edinburgh International Festival has announced its 2015 programme, including some exciting dance highlights. These include Sylvie Guillem, Israel Galván, Zürich Ballet and Les Ballets C de la B. This year’s festival runs from 7-31 August, and is an artistic delight for all culture vultures.
Les Ballet C de la B will dance Alain Platel and Frank Van Laecke’s En Avant, Marche!, a work which starts in the rehearsal room of an amateur brass band in Flanders. Ballet Am Rhein will dance Martin Schläpfer’s Seven, set to Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, and the iconic Guillem will perform her farewell show, Sylvie Guillem – Life in Progress. In addition, Galván will dance Lo Real, which explores the plight of the Roma and Sinti people in fascist Spain in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Festival provides a huge variety of artistic offerings to those who descend upon the city during the summer. In terms of dance 2015 is an important year, especially for those hoping to catch Guillem performing for the last time. Guillem will also be performing at Sadler’s Wells and the Birmingham Hippodrome as part of her farewell tour.
Also at the Edinburgh Festival, Zürich Ballet will perform a double bill of company director Christian Spuck’s Sonett which uses speech and music by Mozart and Philip Glass to explore Shakespeare’s sonnets, in addition to Wayne McGregor’s Kairos, set to Max Richter’s reimagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with designs by Idris Khan. TAO Dance Theatre will perform Weight x 3, created by its founder Tao Ye to music by Steve Reich. Richter will also perform his Vivaldi work in concert with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. There will also be a dance element in a new production of Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, conducted by Iván Fischer with choreography by Veronika Vámos.