THE LAST QUARTET – SEKE CHIMUTENGWENDE

This is a special adaptive iteration of the work that has developed for performing at Wainsgate.

In The Last Quartet, Seke imagines a “last work” or a “last attempt” at choreography. Four dancers enter and exit the stage through gaps in the audience, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in trios and sometimes all together. They are figuring everything out through movement - how to begin, how to connect, how to change, how to end - leaving fleeting traces of scenes, relationships, and characters for the audience to contemplate. They share the stage with composer Jamie McCarthy, whose elegiac, electro-acoustic score evokes the slow and sudden changes of weather systems and cloud formations.

Seke is thinking about this “last work” as an opportunity to go back to the beginning; back to the core elements of dancing and music, to imagine them anew. With no fixed sequences of movement and no fixed order of events, The Last Quartet offers a glimpse of limitless possibilities and new beginnings in this current moment where hope is scarce and futures lie everywhere in ruins.

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time”

- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Credits 

Choreographer: Seke Chimutengwende

Dancers: Temitope Ajose, Charlie Ashwell, Seke Chimutengwende and Matthias Sperling

Rehearsal Director: Stephanie McMann

Composer: Jamie McCarthy

Dramaturg: Efrosini Protopapa

Costume designer: Annie Pender

Lighting designer: Marty Langthorne

Set designer: Bethany Wells

Production manager: Michael Picknett

Producers: Metal & Water