The Company
Host
Chloe Carterr
Dance Artists
Arran Green, Claire Cunningham, Faye Stoeser, Fukiko Takase, Kenny Wing Tao Ho, Kibrea Carmichael, Maycie-Ann St-Louis, Rachele Rapisardi, Zoë Bywater
Dance Artists (Rambert School)
Amari Webb-Martin, Cerys Lewis, Leo Rice-Wallen, Maya Innis, Olivia Cheung, Radha Singh, Roshaan Asare, Ruby Runham, Scout Adams
Nu Civilisation Orchestra
Artistic Director / Bass Gary Crosby
Music Director / Piano Peter Edwards
Baritone Sax / Flute Aleksandra Topczewska
Trombone Anoushka Nanguy
Guitar Ash Blasser
Lead Trumpet Becca Toft
Tenor Sax David Kayode
Alto Sax Donovan Haffner
Alto Sax (dep) Kassa Green-Jakcsi
Trumpet Mark Kuvuma
Drums Rod Youngs
Upright bass (first half) Tom Sheen
Bass Trombone / Tuba Yusuf Narcin
Creative and Production Team
Director and Choreographer Suzy Willson
Lighting Designer Hansjörg Schmidt
Costume Designer Marianthi Hatzikidi
Set Designer Sarah Blenkinsop
Production Manager Stuart Heyes
Rehearsal Director Claire Cunningham
Sound Engineer Marina Martinez
Stage Manager Pembe Tokluhan
Lighting Operator and Programmer Joshie Harriette
Hair Stylist Britini Campbell
Make-up Artist Heavenly Tucker
Deputy Costume Stylist Josephine Skomars
Costume Assistant Chiara Formato
Handcrafted paper flowers Djenaba Davis-Eyo
Design Assistants Lotte Allan and Peipei Li
Costume designs include pieces by Saul Nash and Toogood
Executive Producer Roxanne Peak-Payne
For Clod Ensemble
Artistic Directors Suzy Willson and Paul Clark
Executive Director Roxanne Peak-Payne
Projects Producer Fraser Buchanan
General Manager Katie Webster
Communications Suzanna Hurst
Apprentice Content Creator Shjodi Ison
For Tomorrow’s Warriors
Co-Founder / CEO Janine Irons
Co-Founder / Artistic Director Gary Crosby
Head of Special Projects Fish Krish
Marketing & Communications Manager Graeme Miall
Head of Communications Indy Vidyalankara
Production Co-ordinator Rohit Jepegnanam
For Rambert School
Chief Executive, Principal and Artistic Director Amanda Britton
Deputy Principal Darren Ellis
Event Information
Running time: approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)
Age guidance: 14+
This production contains haze.
Photography and filming, including of the audience, may take place during this performance by media and social media users.
BSL-interpreted performance, Thu 17 Apr
BSL-interpreted by Jacqui Beckford.
Created and produced by Clod Ensemble in association with Nu Civilisation Orchestra.
Clod Ensemble and Nu Civilisation Orchestra are supported by Arts Council England.
Lead image by Jesse Olu Ogunbanjo
Further images by Graeme Miall and Jesse Olu Ogunbanjo
This performance takes place on the Barbican Theatre stage and is set-up to feel like a gig venue with an on-stage bar, dancefloor, tables and standing tables. Audiences are invited to join in and dance if they want to, or can step back and watch the show.
On-stage bar
There is a bar on stage which is open throughout the performance. This is a cashless bar. You can also purchase drinks from any of the bars in the centre and bring them into the auditorium.
Unreserved Seating
There are some tables on stage where audiences can sit and enjoy the performance. These tables are unreserved and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Seating will be prioritised for audience members with access needs.
Unreserved Standing Tables
There are standing tables on stage where audiences can lean during the performance.
Accessibility
This event is wheelchair accessible. Seating will be prioritised for audience members with access needs.
If you have any access requirements, please get in touch before your visit to discuss how we can best support you by reserving a space or seating. Please email [email protected] or call our Access Line on 020 7101 1188 (Mon-Sun, 10am-5.30pm).
Moving Music
by Suzy Willson and Paul Clark, Artistic Directors, Clod Ensemble
The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady is Charles Mingus’ big band masterpiece; a wildly sensual, rhythmically explosive work, which consistently ranks highly on lists of the best albums of all time.
Mingus developed The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady in 1963, putting together a bespoke 11-piece band which played nightly at the Village Vanguard in New York for a six-week stint. It is a composition which was ahead of its time – remarkable in reaching into so many different corners of the musical landscape while remaining a coherent long-form composition. It is a work that is brilliantly difficult to categorise.
Mingus was musically voracious, and in Black Saint you can hear the expansive palette he had at his disposal: of course the music of the big band tradition, but also the cutting-edge jazz and experimental music of the 1960s, South American music, waltzes, hard-edged blues, 20th-century classical music and Flamenco.
Many commentators have noted the uncanny sibling relationship between the album and Stravinsky’s ballet score, The Rite of Spring. Both musicians tapped into a music that somehow seems to look forward and backward at the same time – confidently mashing up primal rhythms and simple folk melodies with crunching modernism and unfettered flights of imagination. But perhaps the biggest resemblance is that these pieces were made to be danced to. Mingus himself never got to experience Black Saint as a dance piece.
When Music Director Peter Edwards lovingly transcribed Black Saint by ear, he left room, as Mingus did, for improvised passages by his virtuoso soloists. In our production, the dancers mirror this structure, blending choreographed sections, improvised solos and invitations for the audience to take to the dance floor and become part of the choreography itself.
Clod Ensemble’s work has always been based on the idea that if you move to music, you can listen to it differently, and experience it more fully. Just as Black Saint celebrates Mingus’ deep immersion in music from across history and across the world, our production draws on the different contemporary languages and experiences that the dancers, and audience, already have in their bodies.
The thrilling musical journey that Mingus guides us through is rich with joy, sorrow, desire, resistance and grace. And perhaps, as we move together on the dance floor we can feel all these things in our bones – inspiring us to listen, to sense, to respect each other and to love.
‘I say, let my children have music... For God’s sake, rid this society of some of the noise so that those who have ears will be able to use them some place listening to good music.’ Charles Mingus
Biographies
About Clod Ensemble
Since 1995, Clod Ensemble’s Suzy Willson and Paul Clark have developed a highly original performance language, blending movement, dance, sound, and theatre. Their ambitious and finely crafted performance projects have been presented at renowned venues across the world including Tate Modern, Southbank Centre, Sadler’s Wells, Public Theater New York, Venice Architecture Biennale and Serralves Museum, Porto.
Each production has its own distinctive musical and visual identity. Under Glass is a promenade production where performers are contained within glass vitrines; Silver Swan is a meditation on falling, with seven unaccompanied singers, performed in vast spaces such as Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall; and Red Ladies is a choral event for 15 identically dressed women which takes place across an entire city.
Clod Ensemble’s work aims to nourish creativity, champion health, wellbeing and social justice, and challenge siloed thinking. Their Performing Medicine initiative supports healthcare professionals, medical students and artists to provide respectful care and develop healthy, creative communities
About Nu Civilisation Orchestra
Nu Civilisation Orchestra (NCO) was founded in 2008 by Artistic Director Dr Gary Crosby OBE and is led by Musical Director, Peter Edwards. Since then, the Orchestra has earned a reputation as a shapeshifting, cutting-edge ensemble. Refusing to be bound by genre or scale, it metamorphoses into a new format as each new project is unveiled.
NCO has toured and performed extensively across the UK, and highlights include a BBC Proms debut in 2019, and a national tour in 2021 for a perfectly timed creative exploration and 50th anniversary celebration of Marvin Gaye’s seminal masterpiece, What’s Going On.
At the end of 2022, the Orchestra, featuring ESKA on vocals, embarked on a six-date tour performing Joni Mitchell’s Hejira and Mingus albums, receiving amazing responses from audiences and reviewers.
The Orchestra’s reputation has continued to grow, and this year saw them join Chaka Khan on stage at the Royal Festival Hall as part of her Meltdown Festival at the Southbank.
Special Thanks
Thank you to everyone who has contributed their music, their movement and their creativity to developing this show with us over many years. Special thanks to Valerie Ebuwa, Louise Blackwell, Angela McSherry, Tracy Gentles and the late, great Emma Gladstone.
Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
The original production which premiered at Shoreditch Town Hall as part of EFG London Jazz Festival, was generously supported by Postcode Society Trust, Cockayne – Grants for the Arts & the London Community Foundation, Hackney Council’s Shoreditch & Hoxton Art Fund, Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation and Hinrichsen Foundation.
From the Barbican
Barbican Centre Board
Chair
Sir William Russell
Deputy Chair
Tijs Broeke
Deputy Chair
Tobi Ruth Adebekun
Board Members
Randall Anderson, Munsur Ali, Michael Asante MBE, Stephen Bediako OBE, Farmida Bi CBE, Zulum Elumogo, Jaspreet Hodgson, Nicholas Lyons, Mark Page, Anett Rideg, Jens Riegelsberger, Jane Roscoe, Despina Tsatsas, Irem Yerdelen
Clerk to the Board
John Cater and Kate Doidge
Barbican Centre Trust Chair
Farmida Bi CBE
Vice Chair
Robert Glick OBE
Trustees
Stephanie Camu, Tony Chambers, Cas Donald, David Kapur, Ann Kenrick, Kendall Langford, Sir William Russell, Sian Westerman
Directors
Chief Executive Officer (Interim)
David Farnsworth
Deputy CEO (Interim)
Ali Mirza
Director of Development
Natasha Harris
Head of Finance & Business Administration
Sarah Wall
Director for Buildings & Renewal
Dr Philippa Simpson
Director of Commercial
Jackie Boughton
Director for Audiences
Beau Vigushin
Director for Arts and Participation
Devyani Saltzman
Executive Assistant to CEO
Hannah Hoban
Theatre Department
Head of Theatre and Dance
Toni Racklin
Senior Production Manager
Simon Bourne
Producers
Liz Eddy, Jill Shelley, Fiona Stewart
Assistant Producers
Mrinmoyee Roy, Mali Siloko, Tom Titherington
Production Managers
Jamie Maisey, Lee Tasker
Technical Managers
Steve Daly, Jane Dickerson, Nik Kennedy, Martin Morgan, Stevie Porter
Stage Managers
Lucinda Hamlin, Charlotte Oliver
Technical Supervisors
James Breedon, Charlie Mann, Josh Massey, Matt Nelson, Adam Parrott, Lawrence Sills, Chris Wilby
Technicians
Kendell Foster, David Kennard, Burcham Johnson, Bart Kuta, Christian Lyons, Kieran Poynter, Fred Riding, Fede Spada, Matt Turnbull
PA to Head of Theatre
David Green
Production Administrator
Caroline Hall
Production Assistant
Ashley Panton
Stage Door
Julian Fox, aLbi Gravener
Creative Collaboration
Head of Creative Collaboration
Karena Johnson
Senior Producer for Learning and Participation
Oluwatoyin Odunsi
Senior Manager
Sarah Mangan
Producer
Josie Dick
Assistant Producer
Carmen Okome
Marketing Department
Head of Marketing
Jackie Ellis
Deputy Head of Marketing
Ben Jefferies
Senior Marketing Manager
Kyle Bradshaw
Marketing Manager
Rebecca Moore
Marketing Assistants
Antonia Georgieva, Ossama Nizami
Communications Department
Head of Communications
James Tringham
Senior Communications Manager
Ariane Oiticica
Communications Manager
HBL
Communications Officer
Sumayyah Sheikh
Communications Assistant
Andrea Laing
Audience Experience
Senior Audience Experience Managers
Oliver Robinson, Liz Davies-Sadd, Ben Skinner
Ticket Sales Managers
Jane Thomas, Bradley Thompson, Lucy Allen
Ticket Sales Team Leaders
Molly Barber, Alex Steggles, Máire Vallely, Nicola Watkinson, Charlotte Day
Operations Managers
Tabitha Fourie, Aksel Nichols, Ben Raynor, Samantha Teatheredge, Hayley Zwolinska
Operations Manager (Health & Safety)
Mo Reideman
Audience Event & Planning Manager
Freda Pouflis
Venue Managers
Catherine Campion, Scott Davies, Maria Pateli, Lotty Reeve, Shabana Zaman
Assistant Venue Managers
Sam Hind, Bronagh Leneghan, Melissa Olcese, Daniel Young
Young Crew Management
Dave Magwood, Rob Magwood, James Towell
Access and Licensing Manager
Rebecca Oliver
Security
Operations Manager
Naqash Sheikh
Audience Experience Coordinator
Ayelen Fananas
