Britain’s leading contemporary dance company is inviting the world’s finest early-career dancers to join Rambert2, a new wing of the company designed to develop and showcase the next generation of highly skilled, thinking dancers.
Rambert2 will tour the UK in autumn 2018 with a triple bill of works by three of the most exciting choreographers working in dance today. Alongside revivals of Rafael Bonachela’s and Sharon Eyal’s breakthrough works E2 7SD and Killer Pig, Rambert2 will create a new piece by former Alvin Ailey dancer and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer.
“I am thrilled and humbled to have been provided the opportunity to create a new work for Rambert2. Choreographing a work with dancers at the beginning of their career is a chance to give back and shape a new generation of extraordinary talent. To collaborate with such exciting, raw talent under the iconic Rambert name will be an incredibly special experience”, Benoit-Swan Pouffer says.
Rambert2 will be the first junior ensemble attached to a UK repertory company – something practised with great success by companies in other countries, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Nederlands Dans Theater. It is the first programme in the world to integrate professional experience at the highest level with postgraduate study. Each dancer will receive financial support equivalent to the London Living Wage and be based at Rambert’s home on London’s south bank.
‘We’re delighted to be launching Rambert2 to huge demand from an extensive range of respected venues and with the incredible support of The Linbury Trust. This feels exactly what Rambert should be doing to expand our already large UK footprint and showcase the world’s best dance artists’, says Helen Shute, Rambert Chief Executive / Executive Producer.
Dancers will complete a 12-month programme with four strands: training, performing, academic study, and outreach activity including schools’ workshops and community events. For schools, Rambert2 will remount Kamuyot, a work created by world-famous choreographer Ohad Naharin for non-theatre spaces and teenage audiences. Rambert2 will perform on the Sadler’s Wells stage in London in November 2018, and tour to 15 venues throughout the UK, expanding Rambert’s presence nationally and introducing substantial audiences across the country to the work of cutting-edge, international dance-makers, whose work is rarely seen in the UK outside of London.
During their year, dancers will complete a new postgraduate qualification, MA in Professional Dance Performance, awarded by Rambert School, one of the country’s leading dance conservatoires.
Amanda Britton, Principal and Artistic Director of Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, about says: ‘Rambert2 opens up a new pathway for graduate students entering the dance profession, providing a unique opportunity to create and perform work at the highest level and train alongside the extraordinary dancers of Rambert company. The Rambert2 dancers will simultaneously be encouraged to integrate embodied and theoretical research to complete their MA in Professional Dance Performance and will emerge as highly employable reflective practitioners’
Rambert2 will be funded through a combination of box office revenues, Rambert’s core funding from Arts Council England and a major three-year grant from The Linbury Trust. Rambert2’s debut season is also supported by Sadler’s Wells.
Rambert Artistic Director Mark Baldwin thinks that this wing if the company is an opportunity to have their work seen by more people in more places, while helping to support the world-class dancers of the future.
Outstanding contemporary dancers at the very beginning of their careers are invited to apply from Friday 1 December to join the first Rambert2 cohort from July 2018. Open auditions will be held in London in February 2018. For full details, see www.rambert.org.uk/rambert2