An opera adaptation of the novel Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata by writer Karthika Naïr, this world premiere by French composer Thierry Pécou, commissioned by the Opéra National du Rhin and staged by choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh will premiered at Opera National du Rhin, Strasburg (France) on 25th September 2022.

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Creative Team:

Composer: Thierry Pécou

​Musical Director: Marie Jacquot

Stage Director, choreography: Shobana Jeyasingh

Set and Costume design: Merle Hensel

Lighting: Floriaan Ganzevoort

Martial Arts facilitator: Saju Hari

Assistant to staging director: Estela Merlos

Artists: Fiona Tong, Cody Quattlebaum, Noa Frenkel, Mirella Hagen, Anaïs Yvoz, CCN • Ballet de l'Opéra national du Rhin, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance, Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse

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Shobana Jeyasingh Dance’s dramatic and powerful new production Clorinda Agonistes – Clorinda The Warrior will be touring this summer and autumn. Inspired by the heroine of Claudio Monteverdi’s celebrated work Il Combattimento, Clorinda Agonistes weaves contemporary dance, film, and baroque and new music to create a story that explores violence, resilience and revelation across the boundaries of culture and time.

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Artists and Collaborators:

Choreography: Shobana Jeyasingh

Composers: Claudio Monteverdi and Kareem Roustom

Music Director: Robert Hollingworth 

Singer: Ed Lyon

Dancers: Shobana Jeyasingh Dance

Rehearsal Director: Estela Merlos

Set and costume: Merle Hensel

Light design: Lee Curran

Sound engineer: Fred de Faye

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Drawing inspiration from Shobana Jeyasingh's upcoming production Clorinda Agonistes, we created a new choreography and music composition which resonated with the ideas, contributions, pride and resilience of an intergenerational group of 30 Streetwise Opera performers and Trinity Laban students. The resulting piece, Where we stand, was performed at the Great Hall of Trinity Laban on Friday 25th February 2022.

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Artists and Collaborators:

Stage Direction: Karen Gillingham

SJD Movement Direction: Verity Richards and Estela Merlos

Music Direction: Hannah Conway and Robert Gildon

Costume: Frankie Gerrard

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Streetwise Opera

Shobana Jeyasingh Dance 

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance

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Pleasure Island II, in collaboration with the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, revolves around the idea of ​​adult isolation as a strategy to escape from oneself. With Elliot Carter’s Mosaic, we cross the dance corps with the ensemble to explore a dimension of the body and movement in relation to unusual sound: from its capacity for deformation and extension as a starting point to tell stories or build other shelters. Likewise, this work and its staging are proposed as a result of the work developed with the participants in the ENOA (European Network Opera Academies) workshops in collaboration with the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía.

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The Pleasure Island project ends with the world premiere of the work Internités by the composer Januibe Tejera. Intermités, a word conceived as a mixture between interior (interne) and infinite (eternité), represents the present, internal and individual time of each one, at the same time as finite. The work proposes an exploration of the various forms of experience over time in dialogue with the movement of Ariadna Montfort and Estela Merlos. The moment, often subliminal, becomes the axis of continuity.

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Daring new dance work designed for Manchester's Deansgate by French choreographer Boris Charmatz. Sea Change is a huge human jigsaw featuring more than 150 Greater Manchester residents among the cast. 

Created especially for the Festival, Sea Change will fill Deansgate with a chain of professional and non-professional dancers with a unique and captivating response to the pandemic – a celebration of togetherness in a post-lockdown world.

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Commissioned by Manchester International Festival. Produced by Manchester International Festival and Terrain.

Choreography: Boris Charmatz
Chreorgrapher's Assistant: Magali Caillet-Gajan 
Music selection: Olivier Renouf 
Sound designer: Dan Steele Sound 
Costume designer: Florence Samain 

Dancer-Assistants: Djino Alolo Saban, Ilario Santoro, Marion Zurbach, Thomasin Gülgeç, Gemma Higginbotham, Neila Callhan, Claire Godsmark, Estela Merlos

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Further information about the event 

Creation process for a new dance-opera inspired after Monteverdi's Il Combatimento, directed by Sri Lankan London based choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh.

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Artists and Collaborators:

Choreography: Shobana Jeyasingh

Composers: Claudio Monteverdi and Kareem Roustom

Music Director: Robert Hollingworth 

Singer: Ed Lyon

Dancers: Shobana Jeyasingh Dance

Rehearsal Director: Estela Merlos

Set and costume: Merle Hensel

Light design: Lee Curran

Sound engineer: Fred de Faye

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Upcoming news on Sadler's Wells premiere and 2022 tour

TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) is collaborating with the English Faculty, Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD) and DANSOX as part of the Professor of Poetry Lecture Series, to invite 500 participants to be part of a Postal Poetry Performance, taking place at midnight on Thursday 30th November. This project is directed by Alice Oswald

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Artists and collaborators:

Poetry: Alice Oswald

Design: Kevin Mount

Sound Artsist: Joseph Kay

Choreography and Dance: Estela Merlos and Thomasin Gulgec

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Little Grasses Crack Through Stone: A short dance film inspired by Sylvia Plath's poem Three Women

Choreography: Anjali Mehra

Dancers: Charlotte Broom, Cordelia Braithwaite and Estela Merlos

Produced by: TEA Films and New Adventures

​Evolving from the New Adventures Choreographer Award (NACA) originally established by colleagues and friends in celebration of Matthew Bourne’s 50th birthday in 2010, ADVENTURES IN FILM aims to bring about career developing opportunities to women from a multitude of backgrounds, experiences and collective world views; providing them with a platform to exercise and hone their skills as artists, producers and creative storytellers.

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Daniel Squire, who staged the London performance of Night of 100 Solos and former dancer of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company will create a unique arrangement of solos for Oriente Occidente 2020. These will be performed in a tribute evening at the Zandonai Theatre and in site-specific performances organized in the city center streets of Rovereto.

Choreography: Merce Cunningham

Stage direction: Daniel Squire

Danced by: Luke Ahmet, Harry Alexander, Daphne Fernberger, Molly Hick, Hannah Kidd, Thomasin Gülgeç, Estela Merlos, Benjamin Warbis.

Artist residency curated by Arts Charity The Koppel Project. A fantastic platform at the old building of Central Saint Martins in Central London to continue developing dance and teaching practice alongside dance artist Thomasin Gulgec and visual artist Rocio Chacon. Also an opportunity to revisit last year's creation Blind spots and Chacon's solo piece Inland. 

‘Sonoma’ is born from the need to return to the origin, to the body, to the flesh, and from meat and organic matter to get lost on a journey between sleep and fiction where the human meets the extraordinary. To make everyday things strange, giving up on building meanings, letting signs germinate and proliferate alone; communicating with the most irrational layers of humanity, where the united cries out to separate, and the separated always seeks to rejoin.

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Artists and Collaborators:

Direction: Marcos Morau

Choreography: Marcos Morau in collaboration with dancers 

Dancers: Ariadna Montfort, Lorena Nogal, Marina Rodriguez, Nuria Navarra, Angel Boix, Laia Duran, Anna Hierro, Sau-Ching Wong, Alba Barral,

Rehearsal Director: Estela Merlos

Dramaturgy: Conde de Torrefiel, Pablo Gisbert, Roberto Fratini

Sound Designer: Cristobal Saavedra

Costume Designer: Silvia Delagneaux

Lighting Designer: Bernat Jansà

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An opera adaptation of the novel Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata by writer Karthika Naïr, this world premiere by French composer Thierry Pécou, commissioned by the Opéra national du Rhin and staged by choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh will premiere on 21st March 2020 at Opera National du Rhin, Strasburg (France)

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Creative Team:

​Musical Director: Marie Jacquot

Stage Director, choreography: Shobana Jeyasingh

Set and Costume design: Merle Hensel

Lighting: Floriaan Ganzevoort

Martial Arts facilitator: Saju Hari

Assistant to staging director: Estela Merlos

Artists: Fiona Tong, Cody Quattlebaum, Noa Frenkel, Mirella Hagen, Anaïs Yvoz, CCN • Ballet de l'Opéra national du Rhin, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance, Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse

New creation by London based choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh inspired by the work and life of Austrian artist Egon Schiele. 

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Artists and Collaborators:

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Direction and Choreography: Shobana Jeyasingh

Music Composer: Orlando Gough

Visual artist: Ben Cullen Williams

Lighting designer: Adam Carree

Video design: YeastCulture

Costume design: Cottweiler

Sound engineer: Fred de Faye

Dancers: Catharina Carvalho, Sunbee Han, Dane Hurst and Estela Merlos

Rehearsal Directors: Ruth Voon and Claire Cunningham

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Extract performance from recently premiered duet Blind spots at Dockyard Festival 2019. With the support from Swindon Dance and Arts Council England, Blind spots is a collaboration with dance and martial artist Thomasin Gulgec and music composer Joseph Kay. A short movement workshop will be offered after the performance, all ages welcome!

​Where: Clockhouse Community Centre, Defiance Walk, Woolwich Dockyard, SE18 5QL

When: 4pm

The Happiness Project choreographed by Humanoove's director Didy Veldman and with music by Alexander Balanescu , was part of the iconic American dance festival Jacob's Pillow this summer. It was a wonderful experience to perform in such historical place in the middle of Massachussets spectacular nature.

Blind spots is a new duet by Thomasin Guleç and Estela Merlos in collaboration with interdisciplinary sound artist and composer Joseph Kay. Commissioned by Swindon Dance and supported by Arts Council England, Blind spots explores our conditions in which experience is shaped by the capacity to adapt. The work will premiere on 21st June at Swindon Dance and will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience. 

Feeling honoured to be performing at this unique and historical event , celebrating the life and work of influential American choreographer Merce Cunningham. 

​Performance on 16th April 2019 at London's Barbican Theatre.

Live Stream and further information about The Event available on link below.

​Creative team:

​Daniel Squire: Staging

John King: Music Director

Ken Tabachnick: Executive Producer

Trevor Carlson: Creative Producer

Second edition of Prix de Lausanne's Choreographic Project, assisting dutch choreograher and Humanoove's artistic director Didy Veldman. 'Is to Be' is a new dance work that was created in one week with 26 students from the Prix de Lausanne partner schools and was premiered at Beaulieu Theatre on 9th February 2019.

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Direction and Choreography: Didy Veldman

Music from Arvo Pärt, Tabula Rasa

Assistant Director: Estela Merlos

Realisation: PlanFilms

With the support of the Beau-Rivage Palace (Lausanne)

Co-commissioned by 14–18 NOW and supported by Wellcome, Contagion is a 40-minute promenade dance work exploring viral contagion and war as pandemic in science, art and war-related sites across the UK. It opens at the Gymnasium Gallery in Berwick-upon-Tweed on 15 & 16 September, a former army barracks where soldiers were sent to keep fit during the first world war,

For further touring dates please click here.

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Direction and Choreography: Shobana Jeyasingh

Rehearsal Director: Ruth Voon, Claire Cunnigham

Dancers: Avatara Ayuso, Catarina Carvalho, Sunbee Han, Ruth Voon, Emily Pottage, Rachel Maybank, Vania Doutel, Estela Merlos

The Jaqueline du Prez Music Building at St Hilda's College, University of Oxford welcomes one of Holland's most innovative group of unconducted musicians, Ensemble Klang to work with five dancer-choreographers and four composers (St Hilda's, St Anne's) in a unique collaboration resulting in four new works of 'Motion and Meaning'

​Anna Appleby – CUE (Choreography: Malgorzata Dzierzon. Dancers: Piedad Albarracin Seiquer, Liam Riddick)

Joel Baldwin – Grim’s Ditch feat. mezzo Michaela Riener and a film by Sophie Sparkes (Choreography: Patricia Okenwa. Dancers: Estela Merlos, Liam Riddick)

Joseph Kay – How many eyes do we have then, being two... (Choreography: Estela Merlos. Dancers: Liam Riddick, Piedad Albarracin Seiquer)

Sophie Sparkes – new work (instrumental) (Lighting Design by Christopher Burr)

Assisting internationaly acclaimed director and choreographer Marcos Morau on La Veronal's new production Pasionaria. This new work by Barcelona based company is a co-production with Teatros del Canal (Madrid), Théâtre National de Chaillot (París), Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Sadler’s Wells (London), Tanz Im August (Berlin), Temporada Alta – Festival de Tardor de Catalunya (Girona – Salt), Grec Festival  (Barcelona), Oriente Occidente Dance Festival (Rovereto, Italy).

​Premiere 2 and 3  June 2018 - Teatros del Canal (Madrid, Spain)

Festival Grec 25 and 26 July 2018 - Teatre Lliure (Barcelona, Spain)

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More information about Pasionaria's ongoing tour here

Preview performances of a new dance theatre production that will capture the imagination of children, families and people of all ages, based on Mary Norton’s much loved book The Borrowers, about tiny people who live under the floorboards.

Choreographed by director Jane Hackett and dance artists Estela Merlos and Thomasin Gulgec, the production playfully integrates contemporary dance, physical theatre, animation and sound to bring to life this magical tale.

Set within an oversized world of beautiful hand-painted animation, created by artist Betsy Dadd, with a specially commissioned score from composer Tobias Saunders.

After two weeks of research at Swindon Dance in September, Nono was presented on 5th October at Pavillion Dance Bournemouth as a part of Hatch & Scratch, a choreographic platform opportunity to show our work-in-progress.

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Nono is a solo piece performed by Merlos and directed by co-creator Thomasin Gulgec. Nono looks at the relationship one has with past and present, savouring the imprints that remain. A return to the origins through an improvised performance where the notions of silence and motion in stillness are at the core of the work.

Thomasin Gulgec and Estela Merlos have been granted the opportunity to become Swindon Dance Associate Artsist 2017 - 2018

Promotion video link available to watch here

Delighted to have been invited to lead six days of contemporary workshops during the 4th Beijing International Ballet and Choreography Competition Summer School.

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Joining Catalan dance artist Ariadna Montfort  as artistic assistant and rehearsal director this summer.  

Winner of Premi Coreogràfic Institut del Teatre 2016, Moaré was commissioned for the Grec Festival 2017. The full production will be premiered at Sala Hiroshima in Barcelona on 26, 27 and 28 July.

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Direction of choreography: Ariadna Montfort

Dancers: Ioseba Yerro, Izaguirre, Angela Boix Durán, Blanca Tolsà Rovira and Roberto Gómez

Music: Volans

Lighting: Álvaro Frutos

Costume Design: Adriana Parra

Artistic assistant and rehearsal director: Estela Merlos

Dramaturgy: Alba Pujol

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