Kathleen+

Ed Wubbe: Kathleen (music: Godflesh/Stern)
Marco Goecke: Beautiful Freak (music: Chet Baker e.a.)
Ed Wubbe: Beeswing (music J.S. Bach)

Scapino Ballet Rotterdam presents the evening programme ‘Kathleen+' with the dance classic ‘Kathleen', the sensational ‘Beautiful Freak' and the première of ‘Beeswing'.

20 years ago, the dance world was rocked to its foundations by Ed Wubbe's explosive piece ‘Kathleen' with its raw movements set to the trash-rock beat of Godflesh; incredible duets and effervescent group choreographies. The piece is about aggression, love and comradeship among a group of city kids, and blazed a trail from Rotterdam to New York. It left the critics tongue-tied: "Inspired Mass Choreography", "The West Side Story of the 1990s" - and the New York Times was brimming with praise - "a very exciting and persuasive dance experience." In 2011 Rotterdam's most successful dance hit is back where it all began: Rotterdam

The phenomenal ‘Beautiful Freak', inspired by the tragic demise of jazz musician Chet Baker, prompted Ed Wubbe to invite choreographer Marco Goecke to Holland. Goecke is forging a fresh language of dance with hyper-fast movements, slapstick and abrupt changes of pace saturated in a magical stage atmosphere. ‘Fascinating from beginning to end' was how one newspaper critic described the piece, which radically changed the phenomenology of the dance landscape.

What began as an experiment at Scapino in 1999, the collaboration with urban dance, has burgeoned into an innovative, riveting dance style. ‘Beeswing' is the most recent urban-inspired classic in which Ed Wubbe fuses the ‘waves' and ‘freezes' of urban dance with academic movements in a lyrical duet to the accompaniment of two cello suites by J.S. Bach.

Première: Tuesday 11 October 2011, Rotterdamse Schouwburg
Playing: Fr. 23 Sept. - Wed. 16 May 2012