The Place, London’s leading centre for dance performance and creation, is delighted to launch its summer 2024 season, with highlights including the London premiere of Igor x Moreno’s latest work Karrasekare, a new partnership with Generation A festival which profiles some of the most exciting new dance artists from the African continent, the 7th edition of the annual Festival of Korean Dance, and a host of urgent, boundary pushing performance by UK based artists including Charlotte Mclean, Jamilla Johnson Small, Dani Harris Walters and Annie Hanauer.

“Our Summer Season is replete with distinctive international work arriving to The Place from Senegal, the Ivory Coast, China, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg and South Korea. Much of our programme is given over to festivals - we’re delighted to be partnering for the second time with Queer East, presenting ErGao’s Disco-Teca, and to be co-producing the seventh edition of A Festival of Korean Dance. Indeed, Karrasakare by Igor x Moreno is a work that considers the social function of festivals, carnivals and rituals and is not to be missed. We’re excited for our audiences to meet all these brilliant choreographers. International programming is complemented by works from some of the UK’s leading independent artists and makers including SERAFINE1369 and Jaivant Patel, and our season closes with an outdoor celebration of dance for families with Family Dance Day returning to Coram’s Fields. - The Place Programming Team

Highlights of the spring 2024 season include:

• The 7^th edition of A Festival of Korean Dance in London and on tour (22 -31 MAY)
• The London premiere of Karrasekare by Igor x Moreno (10&11 MAY)
• The Passion of Andrea 2 by Work Place artist Simone Mousset (8 MAY)
• A new partnership with French festival Génération A (22 Feb)

Programme of work this summer at The Place

SERAFINE1369 (Jamila Johnson-Small) works with dancing as a philosophical undertaking - a political project with ethical psycho-spiritual ramifications for being-in-the-world. IV is part of a modular series of performances (II (2023), XII (2022), I I I (2021)) that consider cycles, time, divination and decomposition. A series of tableaux, a speaking clock that announces each passing minute and the sounds of a breaking storm create the scene for the work to fracture and unfold from stillness into moments of blissed out dancing and the fleeting meaning that emerges through proximity and relational landscapes. (9&10 APR)

Waltzing The Blue Gods is a liberating tale in two parts, that reimagines the Queer symbolism of the Hindu gods, Shiva and Krishna, and the role they played in Jaivant Patel’s sexual awakening and spiritual relationship to faith, to becoming an openly homosexual British-Indian man. Part auto-biographical, part fantasy, the evening celebrates new possibilities for a rich and traditional art form, Kathak, creating a bold work that reimagines pertinent global intercultural narratives and joyfully celebrates the intersectionality of modern lived experiences. (16 APR).

With Futuristic Folktales, Scottish dance artist Charlotte Mclean attempts to tell the momentous tale of the first womb, humbly attempting to unify humanity through the infinite narrative of birth. Exploring the act of storytelling, rather than the story itself, the work questions the preservation of tradition, myth, and identity. Using contemporary, breaking and Scottish Highland dance, it scrutinises borders, body politics and reproductive justice. Malin Lewis, a queer bagpiper, fiddler, and BBC Young Traditional Musician of the Year finalist for 2022, adds a unique genre-bending sound. (18 APR)

Fault Lines by Lila Dance pulls at the tension in our relationship with nature. When it feels like we are racing towards an unknown future, how can the enormity of climate change be made personal? Exploring the emotional journey from feeling overwhelmed to empowerment, the narrative follows a set of characters as they navigate the changing landscape, through sun-scorched plains, roaring waves, cityscapes, and smoking forests in pursuit of unravelling their connection to our planet’s fate.

Fault Lines blends stunning dance with new writing by Nick Walker, and an original sound score by Dougie Evans. Through the projection of digital imagery by Zach Walker (MakeAmplify) and digital moving illustrations by Courtney McCarthy, the natural world enters the space to create a rich sensory world for the performers. (20 APR)

In 2023, The Place became a hosting venue for Queer East, a cross-disciplinary festival showcasing LGBTQ+ work from East and Southeast Asia. Now in its fourth edition, the festival continues to explore, across venues all over London, what it means to be queer and Asian today.

He Qi-wo, aka ErGao, is one of the first dancers and choreographers to explore matters of sexual identity in China. Disco-Teca remembers a period in the early 80s, when disco trends swept from the south of the country as China opened its doors. It was an ecstasy of engaging in the world, represented by disco music, flamboyant dance moves, sexy bright lips, fashionable bell bottoms, batwing sleeves, and wild hairdos. After three decades of restriction and uniformity, a rebellious quality began to thrive with disco music in dance halls. Seemingly escaping from Pandora's box, sex, gender, body, passion and all of the elements associated with disco actively got involved in the raging waves of social reforms. (26&27 APR)

A Space for All Our Tomorrows imagines a utopian space for different bodies to share. Taking inspiration from the historical artist community of Monte Veritá in the Swiss mountains. Using their different physicalities and voices, Annie Hanauer and collaborators explore the properties of the body, togetherness and individuality, presence and power, always in relation to utopia and disability. Four bodies, with their own wisdom, hold this infinite human search through their insistent presence. They channel the feeling of something that is intangible, imaginary and different for every person, particularly for those who have experienced marginalization in contemporary society. (3&4 MAY)

Masquerading as a sequel to an earlier, non-existent version of itself, The Passion of Andrea 2 is a mischievous con artist of a dance piece about uneasiness, the inability to fully understand, and the painful desire for more. Never completely sure of itself, this is essentially a show about a world of impossibilities, in which disappointment, idealism, anger, confusion, and death carry on a strange dialogue. In this zany, absurd piece, Work Place artist Simone Mousset presents three characters who share the same identity, taking us into an unreal universe tinged with parody, between dance, theatrical improvisation and humour. (8 MAY)

“It's a little bomb, a nugget of talent and (false) lightness.” - Toute la culture

After presenting their latest work in Rome and Paris, internationally acclaimed artistic duo Igor x Moreno, creators of BEAT and Idiot-Syncrasy, bring Karrasekare to London. Inspired by pagan carnival traditions from Sardinia and the Basque Country, this dynamic and innovative performance takes us on a journey back to the roots of traditional rhythms, unearthing the queer in the pagan rituals that used to take place in the streets and squares and reimagining them inside a black box. By challenging any sense of prudishness, Karrasekarecaptures the sense of chaos, community and catharsis experienced at folk festivals. (10&11 MAY)

“Earthy, carnal and enigmatic, the piece holds a queer imagery and evocative elements full of symbolism.” – Springback magazine

First conceived at Resolution festival in 2019,Happy Father’s Day by Dani Harris-Walters is a reflective coming-of-age piece with a comedic edge. Telling the heart-stirring journey of a sperm, this engaging solo work navigates through a realm of anecdotal sketches with a fusion of movement, rap, animation, comedy and spoken word, resulting in the unconventional puberty lesson you wish you had at school. (15 MAY)

“A fully-fledged theatrical triumph.” – Graham Watts

Back for its 7^th edition, the ever more popular Festival of Korean Dance returns to London as well as touring across the UK, to the Lowry/Salford, Dance City/Newcastle, Tramway/ Glasgow and Pavilion Dance South West/ Bournemouth. At The Place, the festival will compromise three different programmes of work, with performances by Sung Im Her, Melancholy Dance Company and Ahn Ae Soon Company. (22 -31 MAY)

Led by Artistic Director Joseph Toonga, Just Us Hip Hop Apprenticeship Company, the UK's inaugural paid Hip Hop Dance apprenticeship programme, is happy to announce A night of Hip Hop Theatre, featuring new commissioned works from leading UK Hip Hop dance artists and companies. This event includes a special commission from internationally acclaimed Krump and Hip Hop artist Bruno Duarte hailing from Rio, Brazil as well as a new work from Kloe Dean alongside works from Birdgang Ltd, Simeon Campbell and Joseph Toonga. (17&18 MAY)

Created in 2017 at the Théâtre Paris-Villette in France, Génération A is a dance festival whose focus is to give visibility to young contemporary creation from the African continent. The Place is proud to offer London a Double Bill of works from the 2024 edition of the festival, which will be held in Paris in June.

Gaël and El Hadji Malick, originally from Thiès in Senegal, both have a background as bboys. Mixing the codes of different hip-hop and contemporary dances with the traditional dances of Senegalese wrestlers, they present Xarito, the Wolof word for friendships, inventing a rare and infinitely personal dance as a journey, strewn with pitfalls and trials, but also with joy and complicity, reflecting the preciousness of this bond.

A qui le tour? (Whose turn is it?) by Agathe Djokam Tamo questions the body and mind in the face of the loss of a loved one. Through shock, anger, memories and despair, but also a form of rebirth, Agathe Djokaminvites the audience to experience, share and transform these phases of life into a powerful moment of creation. (8 JUN)

The season is completed by work for families. toooB, an enchanting wordless performance for 6–24-month-olds and their grown-ups, is a gentle sensory adventure where a performer is costumed inside a giant caterpillar-like tunnel creation, magically manipulating it before playfully emerging from the tunnel and inviting the audience to play. toooB has an original soundtrack, captivating movement and is designed to be a perfect introduction to theatre and dance for the very young encouraging empathy and playful interaction. There is a stay and play session with the performer after the show. (28 MAY)

Another family favourite, the Place’s annual Family Dance Day returns on 20 JUL, offering a day of fun and free dance activities outdoors at Coram’s Field.

Looking ahead, The Place is very excited to mark Forced Entertainment’s 40th anniversary, celebrated with a London-wide season of work in partnership with the Southbank Centre and Battersea Arts Centre. The Place will present Shown and Told by Damaged Goods, a dynamic performance collage, balancing fixed material and possibilities for free-play. Arising from an exchange between Tim Etchells, artistic director of Forced Entertainment, and internationally renowned choreographer Meg Stuart, it exposes their different practices and sensibilities, exploring the relationship between movement, image and performing bodies. (31 OCT – 2 NOV)

We are also looking forward to the critically acclaimed Goner by marikiscrycrycry (Malik Nassad Sharpe), a sensuous, suspense-filled and fearsome choreographic journey into the psychological depths of horror, creating a radical visual culture from the marginalised perspective, and establishing a Black tradition of horror for the live context. (28 SEP)