Umanoove/Didy Veldman, The Knot, The Place

London dance fans are cordially invited to a wedding at The Place where all the main players – the bride, the groom, the best man and the bridesmaids – are world-class dancers.

Former Rambert dancer Didy Veldman‘s new piece for Umanoove is a wedding celebration with a difference. Shrewdly titled The Knot, the full-evening work uses a supremely physical and theatrical contemporary dance language to examine familiar scenes of matrimony and explore the significance of marriage in Western society today.

A cast of seven dancers create the feel of a big wedding party where audience members are encouraged to participate up onstage as guests.

The intention is that our romanticised perceptions are stripped back to reveal the role of ritual, doubt, nerves, religion and gender in wedlock.

Dutch-born Veldman started choreographing in the late 1980s, and in 2016 launched Umanoove (meaning 'human, move, you, manoeuvre'), with their debut work, The Happiness Project.

Five years ago she created Les Noces, on Stravinsky’s music from a Russian folk wedding, for Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, and that planted the seed of an idea to choreograph a full-length work about marriage and how our concept of it has changed over the last century.

The idea came to fruition when Umanoove premiered The Knot at DanceEast, Ipswich, in February this year. Stravinsky’s distinctive composition is extended with a specially commissioned score by Ben Foskett so everyone can (wedding) party on a bit longer.

After-show discussion with the artists, Tue 20 November