Rambert Events

Posted on May 23, 2014

Rambert is creating a site-specific work for its handsome new home on London’s South Bank. The Rambert Event is a new version of the “Events” staged by legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham, with designs by Gerhard Richter and music by Philip Selway from the rock band Radiohead.

Rambert will be the first professional company to stage an Event since the closure of Cunningham’s own company in 2011. The performances in June and July 2014 take place 50 years after Cunningham presented his first Event in Vienna in 1964. Each Event is a unique combination of Cunningham works, presented and arranged for a particular performance, often with new designs and music. Cunningham staged his Events everywhere from museums to beaches to New York’s Grand Central Station. The Rambert Event shows off its new building, which has already won the 2014 RIBA London Award and been nominated for the Architects Journal AJ100 Building of the Year.

Set and costume designs incorporate screen prints of Richter’s Cage series of pictures, which were inspired by the music of Cunningham’s partner John Cage. Selway will create and play a new score for the Event. Radiohead previously composed music for Cunningham’s 2003 work Split Sides. The Rambert Event will be performed on June 28, July 5 and 12. Click here to buy tickets.

Picture: Rambert in Merce Cunningham’s Sounddance. Photograph: Chris Nash

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.