Whelan/Watson: Other Stories

Music includes Whitney Houston, Stephanie Lapointe, Franck Moon

Choreographed by Danièle Desnoyers, Javier de Frutos, Annie-B Parson, Arlene Phillips, Arthur Pita

Stage and Costume Design by Jean-Marc Puissant

Lighting Design by Bruno Poet

Production Manager: Diane Willmott

Costume Maker: Sasha Keir

Images © courtesy of Royal Opera House

Wendy Whelan and Edward Watson commissioned a program of five new works by five choreographers – three duets and two solos. My aim was to create a world in which these diverse works co-exist, offset and respond to each other.

 

Having previosuly worked with Wendy and Edward, this project presented the opportunity of showing two unique artists in a curated environement reflecting their cultural and artistic heritages and, also, their off-stage personas.

 

Performed to live music played by various formations of five musicians; allowing this complex logistic to happen without interrupting the flow of the performance became crucial to the concept of the design.

 

A combination of two types of surfaces, painted white bricks and large wooden panels, created a variety of settings – a downtown dance studio, an apartement, the corridor of a subway station in New York, an art gallery or a cabaret.

The Evening Standard by Lyndsey Winship

All five pieces are deftly fused into a whole with clever staging and segues, not least designer Jean-Marc Puissant’s wooden walls, which slide to reveal a band of live musicians in changing permutations.