Remembering And Who Shall Go To The Ball? for the Candoco Dance Company
“Apart from a slow movement given over to solitude the music is full of edgy and staccato shapes or cuts reflecting how we cut up the physical world around us as a consequence of the shapes of our bodies.
How much of a body does an intelligence need to be potentially socialised in an age of ever-developing AI? This is but one of the many questions that informed the approach to the project.”
Scott Walker
And Who Shall Go To The Ball?
By Rafael Bonachela 2007
Rafael Bonachela's demanding choreography pushes the dancers to an extreme.
With composer Scott Walker setting the scene for a sinister and primal ball, Rafael Bonachela’s choreography cuts through the space, pushing the dancers into extreme connections, entangled in each others bodies, throwing their partners into flight, only to catch and grab and throw again and again and again.
And Who Shall Go To The Ball was added to the GCSE Dance syllabus in May 2011.
“A company of disabled and non-disabled dancers, Candoco was never going to settle for sideshow status: it was main billing or nothing. And now, they're players on the world stage. They have performed with wheelchairs and crutches, but Candoco's groundbreaking performers refuse to be dismissed as 'disabled dancers'.”
Sanjoy Roy, The Guardian, September 2009
“A blast of red-hot physicality powered by a phenomenal score”
The Independent on Sunday, September 2007
“Bonachela’s trademark duets, in which limbs are violently pinioned and bodies precariously balanced, are forced to new limits.”
The Guardian, September 2007
Production details
Choreography & Direction Rafael Bonachela
Lighting Design Guy Hoare
Costume Design Torsten Neeland
Orchestra London Sinfonietta
Music Composer and Original Concept Scott Walker
Dancers Bettina Carpi, Marc Brew, Nadia Adame, Zoë Brown, Freddie Opoku-Addaie, Natalie Ayton, Jorge Crecis
Music commissioned by Southbank Centre with support from the London Sinfonietta
Produced by Scott Walker
Co-Produced by Peter Walsh
Orchestrated by Scott Walker & Mark Warman
In 2010 And Who Shall Go To The Ball? was reconstructed and especially re-filmed in the company's dance Studio for this Schools and Colleges Resource. This specially created resource gives teachers and students access to all sections of the work close up, 4 specific sections for students to learn and shots of the set. And Who Shall Go To The Ball? is one of the prescribed works on the AQA GCSE Dance Specification and is suitable for study for GCSE Dance and other school and college dance courses. It is the only resource of this type from a company of disabled and non-disabled dancers and is therefore of value to all dance teachers and students, whether in Key Stage 3 or Higher Education.
The work has original music composed by Scott Walker and commissioned by Southbank Centre. Composer Scott Walker's music sets the scene for a sinister and primal ball. Rafael's choreography responds and cuts through the space, pushing the dancers into extreme connections, entangled in each other's bodies, throwing their partners into flight, only to catch and grab and throw again and again and again.
“In a twisted ballroom, bodies are laid out on an empty dance floor and entangled in dysfunctional chairs. the dancers slice furiously through an inescapable space, holding on to one another in contorted embraces and holds”
Rafael Bonachela
