Ruth Little

The excitedly physical staging of Georg Buchner’s tragic and fragmented play about a young man struggling to make the best from what life has dealt him. A hostage to fortune, class and his sadistic superiors, Woyzeck’s fate is played out in a series of nightmarish encounters. He stumbles through a world of macabre carnival, sexual betrayal and cruel oppression, pursued by the demons of his own paranoid fantasies. Pushed beyond breaking point, Woyzeck’s last love- crazed act destroys the only thing he truly cares for.

On a remote Arctic research station, a captive creature (played by the English National Ballet’s charismatic principal dancer Jeffrey Cirio) is unwittingly enlisted into a military program that subjects him to sinister experiments. Amid this turmoil, he finds himself enamoured with a cleaner, the only person who shows him kindness; together, these two outsiders dream of escape from their dystopian surrounds.

In this partial adaptation of poet Karthika Naïr’s award-winning book Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata, an original reworking of the epic Mahabharata, Akram Khan uses kathak and contemporary dance to tell the tale of Amba, a princess abducted on her wedding day and stripped of her honour, who invokes the gods to seek revenge.

Hailed as a masterpiece of 21st century dance, Akram Khan’s Giselle comes to cinemas for the first time with Artistic Director, Tamara Rojo, dancing the role of Giselle, one of a community of migrant workers cast out of their jobs in a condemned garment factory. The classic story of love, betrayal and redemption has been reimagined in this stunning new version, with sets and costumes by Academy-Award winning designer Tim Yip (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), an ‘ominous, gothic’ (The Observer) adaptation of Adolphe Adam’s original score by composer Vincenzo Lamagna and performed by English National Ballet Philharmonic, dramaturgy from Ruth Little and lighting design from Tony Award-winner Mark Henderson. Filmed live at the Liverpool Empire in October 2017, Akram Khan’s Giselle is directed for the screen by Ross MacGibbon.

Winston Smith lives in a world of absolute conformity, his every action is scrutinized by Big Brother. But when Winston meets Julia, he dares to rebel by falling in love. Based on George Orwell’s masterpiece and choreographed by Jonathan Watkins, 1984 pushes the boundaries of contemporary ballet and won the dance award at the South Bank Sky Arts Awards in June 2016.