Performances for ages 7+ see choreographer Emma Martin of United Fall make her London debut
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It’s an important year in the ongoing story of east London.
The launch of Sadler’s Wells East will be the first truly public-facing slice of East Bank to open on the edge of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, marking the advent of the 2012 Games’ most significant cultural legacy.
Its first season will kick off with Vicki Igbokwe-Ozoagu’s Our Mighty Groove from February 6-9, 2025 – the first show to attract audiences to a building designed to pull people in with a bright neon welcome sign.
Its ground floor bar and cafe have the feel of the Southbank centre and, thanks to a free programme of performances on its foyer dance floor, will doubtless soon attract a troop of regulars.
The listings for the main auditorium, which has a seated capacity of up to 550, are packed with transformations of the space for shows planned to include immersive nightclubs and a skatepark.
Also coming up is Birdboy, the London debut of Irish choreographer Emma Martin, which will arrive on Stratford’s newest stage for six performances over February 20-22, 2025.
Suitable for ages seven and up, the solo 40-minute show features a highly physical turn from dancer Kévin Coquelard and a beaten up Volkswagen.
“I created Birdboy for my daughter,” said Emma, who makes work from her base in Carlow, a little over an hour outside Dublin.
“I’ve always admired people who create work for kids but before this I never had. As an audience they’re not polite, they’re honest.
“I’d seen one or two beautiful pieces of work made for children and I had them up on a pedestal, so it always felt like it was something I had to work my way up to.
“It took me a few years to take the plunge.
“I had ideas for working around themes like loneliness and getting to grips with yourself as a person in the world.
“My daughter was eight at the time – it’s the age when children start to see themselves in relation to others.
“I started to see how she related to people and to the world, figuring out who she was. I went into a room with Kévin, a dancer I hadn’t worked with before, but had often seen performing.
“We started with a few images and it started growing – a true collaboration between us. Birdboy grew out of that process.
“It’s a story, told in a non-linear way about a character who has an interior and exterior world.
“There’s bullying happening and he feels a lot of negative emotions, but he has all these different devices to distract himself.
“He eventually finds a way to relieve himself of his worries and confront them.”
from Carlow to Sadler’s Wells East
Emma began her career as a ballet dancer before stepping away after getting “a bit of a wake-up call and taking a break before I hated it”.
She studied drama, theatre and Russian at university with a plan to be “a one-woman show, lighting, directing and making my own work” as a choreographer.
It’s more or less what she’s done since 2012.
“I have my own company now, United Fall, which since 2018 has been the production machine behind what I make,” she said.
“I create a show roughly every two years, depending on the rhythm of the piece.
“It is a long time and I tend to do it in stages.
“There might be two weeks and then another meeting two months later.
“It gives me time to test ideas – I find I like my work better if I have had time to have a love affair with it, to sit with it.
“It’s important that it doesn’t feel like a transient idea, but something I’ll always believe in.
“We’re funded by Arts Council Ireland so that’s easier.
“We don’t have tons of money but it’s a luxury and somehow we make it happen.
“It used to be that you’d do four weeks and then you’d have an audience – I don’t feel that serves the work.
“I prefer things to be slower so there’s more time to realise the technical side too.”
a metaphor for the interior world
For Birdboy, that includes ensuring the automobile that accompanies Kévin on stage is suitably reinforced and able to play its part in the production, which has now been touring for 18 months.
“The car comes from an idea I had for the show of one human left in the world, completely alone, surrounded by debris from human beings,” said Emma.
“We were talking about doing it in a junk yard environment, but I decided in the end to do it in an empty space.
“Then the car came back, because I was thinking about being inside the character’s head in contrast to the outside world.
“I rang the designer one day and we put a car onstage, and that’s how it came about.
“It looks like a car and functions like a car in some ways but it’s a metaphor for our interior worlds.
“The idea of Birdboy taps into the bird imagery that is so ubiquitous in children’s literature.
“You have this idea of being human and not being able to get up and fly away – so, if you could have one superpower, would it be to fly away and see the world from a great height?
“A lot of superheroes can fly, so it’s what the character is wishing for.
“When he experiences difficulties, he wishes that he could just fly away.
“My daughter was also quite involved in the process.
“We were making it in Carlow, so I would bring her and her pal to see it.
“There are a lot of nods to her world, like SpongeBob and YouTube – cartoony references, so I was constantly testing her, to see what she thought.
“She liked it, but I don’t think she necessarily saw herself in it.
“A lot of people have read the character as neuro-divergent.
“My kid is not, but has plenty of friends who are, so she felt an empathy there.
“That’s really what I want audiences to feel – that it’s OK to be different because everyone has something to offer.
“It’s a very high-energy performance, using really raw physicality in combination with lots of emotion, that hopefully should give young people an understanding of the character.
“We’re using hardcore dancing, so the car has many places where it needs to be reinforced.
“I think it speaks to both adults and children and I’d love to see people of all ages there.
“We’re all children really – while I was making it, I was thinking about everyone’s inner child.”
key details: Birdboy at Sadler’s Wells East
Birdboy comes to Sadler’s Wells East in Stratford for six shows over February 20-22.
Times vary depending on the day.
Tickets start at £15. Ideal for ages 7+.
Find out more about the show here
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