Earthfall tour with Chelsea Hotel

Posted on October 3, 2013

Earthfall Dance Company’s new production Chelsea Hotel is set in the bohemian New York hotel, which has welcomed artists from Dylan Thomas and Tennessee Williams to Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe and Sid Vicious.

Earthfall’s production, which follows the success of the award-winning At Swim Two Boys, is set around the time when singer-songwriter Smith and photographer Mapplethorpe were living in the hotel, but also takes in other famous residents.

Jessica Cohen, Earthfall’s co-artistic director, said: “Our production is a crazy mixture of poetic movement, sex, violence, rock and roll, anger, companionship, cowboys and ghosts. It blends truth with lies, reality with fantasy. Projected images layer in narrative, environment and story fragments told directly to camera. We found an essence of the place and a spirit of those who inhabited it; slowly our ‘Chelsea Hotel’ emerged as our story.”

Alongside the show, which tours until December 5, Earthfall will host a series of participatory workshops. See www.earthfall.org.uk for more information. 

Photograph: Hugo Glendinning

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.