National Dance Company Wales: 2025 Season announcement
from Matthew William Robinson
In my time with National Dance Company Wales I have focussed on seeking distinctive voices within the international artistic landscape to shape our work. We have collaborated with artists from Wales and all over the world in this endeavour. In my final programmes I am purposefully investing in the future of dance in Wales and the United Kingdom.
Our 2025 programme is about the future of our art form, and the people who are envisioning it. I am delighted to announce three of the programmes audiences will experience next year.
In Tandem – Spring 2025
In Tandem is a new cross-artform performance weaving together dance, sculpture, drawing and sound conceived by Choreographer Faye Tan, Sculptor and Artist Cecile Johnson Soliz and Composer Richard McReynolds.
Faye Tan and Cecile Johnson Soliz began their collaborative relationship through our Laboratori programme with Chapter in 2022. We intended this programme to foster new artistic relationships between choreographic and visual artists and have been thrilled by the results.
I am delighted to have commissioned Infinity Duet, a new work from Faye and Cecile that will premiere within In Tandem, an event that will blur the lines between gallery and performance space. During the performance the audience will be invited to move around the space to experience Infinity Duet from multiple perspectives and explore the layers of this new collaboration.
Shorts – Spring 2025
Three short works by a new generation
Faye Tan, John-William Watson and Osian Meilir each shape their work from their distinct perspectives. Over the last few years I have watched each carve a space for their work in the United Kingdom. Shorts will share three works that embody their unique artistic signatures.
UN3D by Osian Meilir was created for 4X10 in 2023, a creation and development programme for Welsh choreographic artists as part of our 40th anniversary year. UN3D explores the synchronised, the silly and the sublime to a soundtrack of music by The Police and Bjork. Meilir has been an Artistic Associate of National Dance Company Wales for the last three years, and I believe is at the forefront of the development of our art form in Wales.
Infinity duet by Faye Tan and Cecile Johnson Soliz premieres within In Tandem, before transforming into a stage work for Shorts. This new work brings the artists practices into dialogue in a duet of weight, time and gravity. Tan has been a dancer with the company since 2019, and has persistently honed her choreographic craft and practice. She is a future leader in our sector.
Finally, Hang In There, Baby by John-William Watson premiered in Sadler’s Wells main house in 2022. This laugh out loud work is a “PacMan-esque office nightmare” exploring our relationship with destiny, fate and decision making. Watson is one of the most distinct artists of their generation, their works form complete worlds from which the absurd and the beautiful emerge. I have been waiting for the perfect moment to programme their work, and this is it.
AUTUMN 2025
In the Autumn of 2025 National Dance Company Wales will tour Wales and England with a programme of three dance works that embody the ambition and soul of the company. Marcos Morau’s Waltz, an audience favourite from our 40th birthday season will tour alongside a new commission by Osian Meilir and Infinity Duet by Faye Tan and Cecile Johnson Soliz.
Marcos Morau’s Waltz crafts a landscape of tangled bodies sliding in and out of connection with razor sharp precision. Waltz speaks to me of identity, definition and confrontation. It is a sublime work by one of the world’s leading choreographic artists.
Alongside this, we are commissioning a new work by Osian Meilir. Audiences may be familiar with Qwerin, a powerful work Meilir made in 2021 that continues to tour the world. Meilir’s work is shaped by identity, language, community and nationality and for this new commission I have invited them and their brilliant collaborative team to work with the full company.
Completing the programme will be the touring version of Faye Tan and Cecile Johnson Soliz Infinity Duet, premiered earlier in the year as part of Shorts.
ASSOCIATE CHOREOGRAPHER
Osian Meilir’s work is a thread through this year of transition for the company. I am delighted to announce that in recognition of this and after three years as an Artistic Associate we are appointing Meilir as Associate Choreographer for the year 2025. Meilir is an artist of integrity and kindness, whose values flow through all they do. I am thrilled more audiences will get to know the work of this exceptional artist of Wales.
Applications to be one of the company's next Artistic Associates will open in 2025.
Since 2021 I have been interrogating what a national repertory dance company can be. How can we develop the potential of its structure as a space for many voices? How can this better reflect the world we share now? This has changed what the company makes, who we work with, and our international artistic profile. We are a space for the established, but also for the new. A space to take risks and shape the future. The 2025 programme is shaped by those questions and the reflections I have made in this time.
To be contemporary the company reflects now, but now is always changing and so the work is ongoing. I hope National Dance Company Wales can continue to move forwards, introducing audiences to new waves of artistic voices far into the future.
Matthew William Robinson – Artistic Director National Dance Company Wales
Photos: Kirsten McTernan, Jorge Lizalde, Foteini Christofilopoulou, Anest Roberts