Sadler’s Wells and the West Ham United Foundation are set to team up for Home Turf, a community dance production inspired by football which will receive its world premiere on 24 September 2016. Home Turf is a collaboration between West Ham United Foundation, Sadler’s Wells and a team of over 100 professional and non-professional dancers, including Foundation participants, Company of Elders and alumni of the National Youth Dance Company. The work will carried out by an ultimately diverse cast, united through both football and dance.
The production will be created by an international team of artists including choreographers Pascal Merighi (guest artist, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch), Neil Fleming Brown (Studio Wayne McGregor), Michela Meazza, (guest artist, New Adventures), Lee Griffiths (The Company) and composer Murray Gold (Doctor Who and balletLORENT’s Snow White). Home Turf is an opportunity for Sadler’s Wells’ Creative Learning department and West Ham United Foundation to work together before the Club’s move to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, while Sadler’s Wells will open a mid-scale theatre on the site as part of the Olympicopolis project.
Football will additionally be used as a way to engage local people in activities that they may not usually be involved with. This bold project blending football and dance will become a community production, welcoming non-professional dancers of different ages and backgrounds onto Sadler’s Wells’ main stage, where they will work with professionals to create and perform in a high-quality show. Additionally Home Turf will contribute to the theatre's exploration of what performance is and help develop new audiences for dance using common themes.
Home Turf is supported by Theatron, a network of European performing arts organisations who aim to explore creative and innovative ways of engaging new audiences. Football holds a central position in popular culture across all communities, enabling Home Turf to use this as a vehicle for individual stories and shared memories expressed through dance. The West Ham United Foundation was born in 1990, seeking to promote the Club's core values through its many ground-breaking outreach programmes.