Julie Cunningham & Company – m/y-kovsky/Firebird

Julie Cunningham has established a reputation as an extraordinary contemporary dancer – arresting, poised, sophisticated and precise – during a long career in which she has performed with Merce Cunningham and Michael Clark Companies. Since making her move into choreography, with the double bill To Be Me seen at the Barbican, she has been developing work that responds directly to poems and text.

Julie Cunningham & Company present two dances with music by Western classical composers. Jules Cunningham is interested in how we might relate to these works today; how we can disturb and rearrange hierarchy through a queer reading. How can we make this music make sense through our bodies? How does it change us? m/y-kovsky is a response to Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 (first movement). Initially conceived as part of an exploratory evening of work for Art Night 2019, Cunningham draws on a traditional dance canon, playing with queer ways of relating to each other, the space, and the music. fire bird is a queer and personal interpretation of the iconic Stravinsky musical score written and first performed over 100 years ago, beginning with the Ballet Russes. Cunningham acknowledges the part this score has played in Western dance history, and in their history – they hold within them the web of connections and people who have made this possible.