Simon Leigh © Details of 2003/4 season and your comments Sadler's Wells Reviews Sadler's Wells website

Sadler's Wells Theatre provides a year-round programme of visiting dance companies, forming one of the most important elements of dance-going life in London. Its Director of Programming, Alistair Spalding, spoke to us at the theatre just after the programme for 2003/4 had been announced.

Could you start by saying exactly what your job consists of?

My job is to programme Sadler's Wells for about 42 weeks of the year, and the Peacock Theatre for about 30. The Peacock is new to my domain, from the autumn. So my job is to find work for those two theatres, predominantly dance based. Some opera, when we can afford it, or when someone wants to hire us - when Opera North, say, or Welsh National Opera want to have a London showcase.

But dance is still the theatre’s main interest?

Yes - and that will remain. You know we have a new chief executive, Jean-Luc Choplin, and he wants to do a little bit more music theatre, but it will still be predominantly a dance focus.

Could you tell us something about your background, and how you got into programming?

I got into it by starting working in a more general way, programming in a small theatre in Sussex - dance, theatre, music - that was in the later 80s; and then I started to realise that I enjoyed dance more, and wanted to focus on that. Then a job came up at the South Bank Centre, as the dance and performance producer, and I got that, and I was there for 6 years and developed the dance programme there; then the job came up here when Nigel [Hinds] decided to move on - and I’ve been here three years.

How much input does the Director have into the programming?

It’s delegated to me, although Jean-Luc is more involved than Ian Albery was in terms of programming - certain projects he’s coordinating: in the coming season Robert Wilson [The Temptation of St Anthony], and the Jessye Norman project we’ve been working on together.

How do you go about planning a season? If you’re starting with a blank calendar, do people come to you, do you go to them, do you have a particular balance in mind…?

Well, I start with certain regular things in the programme - visits from Rambert, for example, and Northern Ballet Theatre, many of the British companies who come more regularly make a starting point. Another basic is the Christmas show, which is quite crucial economically. We expect to make about a quarter of a million pounds at Christmas at Sadler’s Wells, which is about a quarter of our annual earnings. Then the Autumn is largely taken up with Dance Umbrella - but again it works in the same way. Val [Bourne] and I look around at what we might do for that period - it’s a question of keeping an eye on what’s happening, then going to see the work and then slotting it in where it’s appropriate.  

Alistair Spalding
© Simon Leigh

Then sometimes we do get approached, often by companies wanting a showcase in London, like the Royal Ballet of Flanders, for instance. But it’s only occasionally that we take those up; it’s basically going out and finding things. I’d like to say that I have a template, and that it’s a case of finding a balance - but in fact it’s more like a kind of alchemy that happens as the programme evolves. Obviously for instance we don’t schedule similar things close to each other, but every season I’ve arranged finds its own balance, so that you have some contemporary European work and some American, and then you have some ballet…

It sounds as if you spend a lot of time travelling.

Probably on average every other weekend. Last weekend I was in Montpellier, which of course was cancelled [due to strike action].

How far ahead to you have to book the very popular companies?

The very popular ones, a long way ahead - but I haven’t got much in the book beyond 2005 - it’s about that far ahead you need to do it. But I’ve still got some gaps for next spring!

On what grounds do you turn down companies that approach you? Content, saleability?

Well, saleability is very important - for instance if it’s a fantastic company but it has never had an exposure in London - but if it’s good enough we’ll do it. An example is Aterballetto: I think they’ve been to London in a different form before, but they’ve got a new artistic director since then [Mauro Bigonzetti] whose work is very interesting, and I would like to introduce his work to London audiences. It’s quite difficult, but I think it’s worth taking a chance with that. But some things are quite mediocre or of little interest.

So even if people offer to come and pay their way, will you still turn them down if you don’t think they’re up to your standard?

Yes, because the bottom line is that in terms of what the audience see, they don’t know if a company is paying or if we’re presenting them, there’s no difference. So in my view it’s very important to keep the quality threshhold there.

Do you deliberately programme more contemporary dance than ballet?

It’s a case of looking at the context of London and trying to provide what’s not being provided at other venues. There’s the Royal Ballet, and a lot of traditional ballet, out there. Also this house is not designed for large-scale full-length ballets, because the wing space isn’t sufficient really. So it’s partly to do with the physical restrictions; also I think it’s true to say that we’re looking, even in the ballet, for the contemporary side of it, rather than presenting another Giselle. We’re looking towards contemporary work in ballet, and to contemporary dance - because I have to say that probably the most interesting work is happening in the contemporary field.

Do you have a target figure for percentage of seats sold for each company?

Yes - it averages somewhere around 70%.

And how often do you make the target?

Up till Christmas this season we were overachieving by some way; then there was a downturn, and we’ve been underachieving - struggling, sometimes. A good Autumn, a very good Christmas, and then it slowed down. That was a general trend, in other London venues as well in that period, and it also coincided with introducing a couple of new names like Garth Fagan.

Do you have a breakdown of your audience by age?

Well, it varies of course - it varies from week to week. When we had Sankai Juku here it went down to something under 30, and with English National Ballet next week it could well go over 40. The age we don’t get here are young teenagers unless we do something like Bounce, which was very successful with them; but we do well with the middle twenties up. We do get school parties, and that’s fantastic, and they pull down the average age, but that’s the exception - like for Rambert earlier this month: they’re studying the works, and Rambert do a lot of education work. But I’m talking really about the audience who come to the box office and buy their own tickets.

Do you find the audience numbers go down outside the term time of the dance colleges?

They don’t make a significant difference to our audience figures - certainly not enough to affect decisions about programme scheduling.

One thing that does seem to have changed a lot in recent years is that we get more programmes with no live music, even when some of the music could be played live. Is the Musicians’ Union being less demanding?

The first thing I’d say is that we try to have as much live music as possible - that’s our policy. The situation with the Musicians’ Union is that we present our programme for the next season to them, and they look at the whole thing rather than show by show. If it’s about 50/50 they’re usually happy. That’s a change because they used to be quite different! Also they’re less concerned when an international company comes and uses a recording, because they understand how expensive it can be. But when Paul Taylor came, they had live music for Promethean Fire for the first time - even in New York it’s too expensive for them. We have a very good relationship with the Musicians’ Union.

Do you have an influence on the programme a company brings?

Yes - I sometimes request certain pieces and have asked that other pieces aren't included - that's the most tricky part - as you can imagine.

I heard it was you who persuaded the NYCB group who were here last September to bring Wheeldon’s Polyphonia.

Yes, I’d just seen in it Edinburgh and loved it, so I asked them to bring it. And then Christopher Wheeldon wanted to bring In the Night, which he said was a strong influence on Polyphonia, and the rest of the programme just flowed from that. And of course that was one where we were able to have all the music live.

When Sadler’s Wells was rebuilt, the story was that it was going to be big enough for the major companies, like New York City Ballet. Is it?

It’s not a big enough house economically for New York City Ballet. In fact, no theatre in London is big enough economically, not even the Coliseum - it doesn’t make financial sense, unless you can find a big sponsor. I have tried to bring them - we’ve had the conversation, but I think they’d rather come to Covent Garden and would see Sadler’s Wells as a compromise.

It was interesting to see what happened to San Francisco Ballet, who were a wow here but played to rather thin houses when they came to Covent Garden.

They’re coming back here!

Looking now at next season, the first thing that struck me was the Rosas programme, which will be done on the stage but with the audience sitting round.

I think it’s nice occasionally that people should come to Sadler’s Wells and see something different - this time they’ll get a view of backstage at the theatre. I saw it in a similar situation, where the audience were onstage, and it needs a fairly large area - but the main reason we’re doing it is that it’s an absolutely superb piece of work. It will only have an audience of 400 but there are just two performers, so it will cost less to put on!

That’s another thing: I seem to remember hearing that with the new theatre, you would be able to close of different bits of it to make different configurations: has that ever happened?

Yes, we’ve done it once to do a show in the round, and so it is possible. What’s difficult is the cost - it costs a lot of money to change, it’s not just a cast of pressing switch. Also we haven’t really found another reason to do it, though we did look at doing Merce Cunningham’s Ocean, which needs that sort of format.

Speaking of Merce Cunningham, do you find that the Barbican is now taking away shows that you think should be yours?

I think the Barbican took advantage of our closure to form realationships with some companies like Merce Cunningham, but we still think Cunningham belongs to Sadler’s Wells in terms of history, and we’d love to have him back - in fact we’re talking to the Barbican about collaborating on doing Ocean in the Roundhouse, with Dance Umbrella, at some point. So that’s the positive side of it - but frankly we do compete for companies. There are only so many really, really strong companies in the world, and since the Barbican started their dance programme we are starting to find we’re competing - but we try to do it in the most co-operative way we can. People do tend to get confused - for instance when Pina Bausch went to the Barbican. I thought people would just go with the companies, but people were saying ‘Is Pina Bausch not coming to Sadler’s Wells any more?’ We kind of lent her to the Barbican for that one project, and she’s coming back to Sadler’s Wells in 2005. I think it’s very important that the companies are seen in the best place, and the Barbican is slightly more intimate so that some companies may be more suited there, but in my opinion big dance companies are best suited here. in terms of space.

The last time the Martha Graham company came, they played the Barbican. Have they been to Sadler’s Wells before?

To the old theatre, yes.

There should be a lot of interest in them, with the wide reporting of the court case they’ve been through…

Yes - I went over to the New York season at the Joyce, and what struck me there was the fact that these dancers were able to dance these works again. There was a real excitement about it, and I think this should be a real event. Also we’ve got live music for them.

Have they kept the old company together through all this?

Some, but the men are all different.

Another event that caught my eye is the Nina Ananiashvili programme, with the Moscow Dance Theatre - interesting because she’s huge in New York but hardly known over here.

Yes - that’s a good example of when we’ve been approached. I presume she wants to do the same thing here in London as she’s done in New York, so we’re hosting that season.

The Jessye Norman programme and the National Ballet of China - they’re both being done in collaboration with Paris?

Yes - they’re both in collaboration with the Chatelet. The National Ballet of China is going to the Chatelet as part of the French Chinese Year of Culture - the French are paying for them to go to Paris, then we’re bringing them over the Channel. There’s 170 of them - the biggest company we’ve ever had here, though that’s including the orchestra. The Jessye Norman programme was produced by the Chatelet, and we’re putting it back together for London.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet are bringing Christopher Hampson’s new Romeo and Juliet presumably, and a mixed bill…

Yes - it’s actually all by London based choreographers - Christopher Hampson, Javier de Frutos and Mark Baldwin.

What are Preljocaj and Forsythe doing?

Preljocaj is bringing a piece called Near Life Experience, and it’s much more abstract than what he’s done here before. It’s very good, and an interesting thing is that it features the music of a band called ???, a French band, who are bigger here than they are in France, so that’s a selling point; and it’s a really good collaboration.

The Forsythe piece is called Kammer Kammer. It’s the last time that Frankfurt will be coming as Frankfurt and it’s a piece that could only come with their infrastructure. There are screens and lots of backdrops, like a film set, and he makes a film on stage - lots of video cameras shooting scenes - it’s liking watching a film set from above and then seeing the product live. It’s very, very clever - it’s full of a mixture of text and dance, and it’s very very strong. It won’t be the last time we have Forsythe here, but it’s the last time as the Ballett Frankfurt.

And then Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake next summer - who is presenting that?

We are working with Clear Channel who are licensing it from Katharine Doré.

And what everyone will want to know, will Adam Cooper be dancing?

We’re going to be announcing some special guests - is that enough of a clue? We’ve got a plan with Matthew to approach a number of different principals, and to advertise when each one will be performing.

Any other programmes that you’d like to highlight?

There’s the hip-hop festival in May - Jonzi D is curating it, and we’re going to have a number of different international companies appearing, and then at the weekend we’ll have workshops - whole place will be taken over by it. And there’s the Flamenco festival which will be in February - that’s happened every January in New York for a while, so I met with the producer of that, and we’ve decided to route all of the artists back through London - so it’s a kind of replica of the New York festival.

It looks as if there’s a deliberate push in a lot of this programme towards a younger, maybe ‘cooler’, audience. Is that coming from you, or your new manager, or is it just coincidence?

It’s a mixture - there are traditional things in there, but yes, there are quite a number of things which might be seen as ‘cool’.

Do you think you actually build an audience through events like that, who will start to check what’s on at Sadler’s Wells, or does it work purely show by show?

It’s not show by show - we’re definitely building a reputation for a certain kind of work. I think there’s a ‘Sadler’s Wells experience’ - usually something which is uplifting in a way, which also has an element of entertainment to it, and I hope that will continue through this season. I think that’s a key thing - basically our biggest stakeholder is our audience. Seventy per cent of our income comes from them, and we have to make sure that we keep a wide view of the dance audience, and we have to make sure there’s a feel that every visit is an event.