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Anda Winters
Artistic Director of Print Room at the Coronet Anda Winters has curated a month-long festival representing the theatre’s diverse, multi-artform programme and made up almost entirely of UK premieres. Coronet International Festival runs over 35 days and spans theatre, art, circus, dance, poetry and installations from around the globe. Featuring artists from 12 countries, the festival presents a fusion of international artworks, crossing borders and genres and defying expectations.
Anda Winters said; “The Coronet International Festival is a month-long embodiment of our venue’s ambitions and vision. The eclectic nature of the programme gives audiences the chance to discover diverse art forms from innovative artists and provides a meeting place for those artists to exchange ideas. Never before has our Notting Hill home presented so many world premieres, the building is buzzing with anticipation and we can’t wait to welcome new audiences, and a wealth of new work, to our theatre.”
Launching the Coronet International Festival is Bells and Spells (25-27 October), an international premiere of selections of new work from globally acclaimed choreographer Victoria Thierrée Chaplin (daughter of Charlie Chaplin) performed by her own daughter Aurelia Thierrée. A surreal spectacle of physical theatre, comedy, magic and dance, Bells and Spells is the tale of a kleptomaniac who falls under the influence of the objects she steals.
Each evening Bells and Spells will form one-half of a double bill with a second performance of live music. From 25-26 October To Imprison the Wind will follow in the auditorium presented by Octandre Ensemble. This concert is an exploration of traditional folk music as interpreted by contemporary European composers including Tristan Murail, Per Nørgård, Kaija Saariaho and the seminal Béla Bartók. The final evening of this double bill will see Grammy Award winner Mike Block (27 Oct) present A Performance of Contemporary Cello Pieces mixing contemporary classical, folk and original music.
From 1 November, both the main house and studio spaces will be occupied by leading South African artists’ London premieres. A Guided Tour of the Exhibition: For Soprano with Handbag (1-4 November) comes from William Kentridge. The lauded artist, recently awarded the prestigious Princess of Asturias prize, will return to Print Room at the Coronet following his sell-out run of Paper Music. Co-conceived with musician and choreographer Joanna Dudley, the piece aims to dissociate works of art from their historical constraints. The piece layers projection with a live performance from a soprano vocalist speaking, singing, reversing and inversing text in Kentridge’s inimitable style.
To Be King (1-4 November), a free multi-media film and sculpture installation from artist Christine Dixon, runs in conjunction with A Guided Tour of the Exhibition. The exhibition explores the legacy of the iconic painting ‘Las Meninas’ by Diego Velázquez, one of the most analysed works in Western art.
The studio space will then become home to Image-Manipulate-Play (6-11 November), a free exhibition from six South Korean video artists exploring the multitude of ways in which we re-process an image to influence its original purpose. Bongsu Park, whose installation Internal Library recently exhibited at the Coronet, will be joined by Ail Bark, Sunpil Don, Jeungtae Gim, Yeoung-su Kim and Woonghyeun Kim to create this work curated by Aram Hwang.
With the first edition of his autobiographical poem destroyed by state officials, controversial Chinese-Swiss poet Yang Lian will visit the Coronet for just one night for a performance in three acts based on chapters from his acclaimed Narrative Poem (10 November). Over 70 minutes, the poet will deliver a selection of autobiographical extracts charting his life from the Cultural Revolution in China, the ‘education through labour’ programmes, the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989 and the poet’s exile. The performance will be a unique collaboration between Lian, cellist Sophie Harris and choreographer Hubert Essakow, whose specially composed score and dance will accompany the poem.
Jerome Kircher, the multi Moliere Award-nominated French actor, will star in Laurent Seksik’s adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday for three nights (13-15 November). Charting the turbulent history of Europe from 1895-1941, Zweig’s memoir tells of life in Vienna in the 20th Century from the demise of the Austro-Hungarian union to the rise of nationalism and the ‘suicide of Europe’ after Hitler’s ascension to power. This adaptation of Zweig’s book, which has been a great inspiration for other artists throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries – including Wes Anderson’s ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’ –will receive its UK premiere in French with English subtitles.
Waves (21-23 November) is an evening of three dance premieres from choreographers Dickson Mbi, Kirill Burlov and Gisele Edwards, juxtaposing their distinctive styles. Dickson Mbi performs Duende: in his first self-choreographed solo piece Dickson draws on his diverse disciplinary background, spanning popping, funk and classical dance, to explore the concept of duende, an idea often associated with flamenco, in which the spiritual life of the artist is made manifest. S/he, a duet by Kirill Burlov, investigates the oscillations of power in intimate relationships, questioning how shifting and dismantled gender roles might affect the balance and imbalance, of power between lovers. Award-winning aerialist Gisele Edwards performs Rasa: continuing her choreographic explorations of the spatiality of sound, Gisele here displays some of her beautiful rope-work in her first collaboration with a sitar player.
Ma (25-26 November) is a theatrical journey through the work of the renowned and often contentious director, poet and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini. Directed by Italy’s Antonio Latella, Artistic Director of Theatre for the Venice Biennale, and starring Candida Nieri, Ma takes the first syllable of ‘mamma’ and reflects Pasolini’s use of the mother as both a muse and a weapon. Viciously murdered in 1975, Pasolini was the subject of much controversy during his career, with sexual taboo being a recurring theme throughout his work.
Innovative Dutch theatre company mugmetdegoudentand bring their award-winning production Hannah and Martin (27-29 November) to Notting Hill as the final performance in the Coronet International Festival. Hannah and Martin is inspired by the true story of the secret love affair between the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt and her teacher, the Nazi Martin Heidegger in the mid-1920s. Lineke Rijxman reprises her role as Hannah Arendt after winning the Theo d’Or – Holland’s most prestigious theatre award – for her performance. Hannah and Martin will be performed in Dutch with English subtitles.
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