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Throughout the UK: Shobana Jeyasingh Dance announces the tour of "Contagion"

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Shobana Jeyasingh Dance

Shobana Jeyasingh Dance announces the tour of Contagion

A major new dance work commemorating the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 at six science, art and war-related sites across England

Premiere: Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed 15 & 16 September
London performances: British Library, London 2 & 3 November

This autumn Shobana Jeyasingh Dance brings Shobana’s latest dance work Contagion to six science, art and war-related sites across the country. The tour opens on 15 and 16 September at the Gymnasium Gallery in Berwick-upon-Tweed, a former army barracks where soldiers were sent to keep fit during the First World War.

Contagion commemorates the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic - which ravaged the world to a greater degree than the Great War itself. It is co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW, the UK’s arts programme for the First World War centenary, and supported by Wellcome.

A promenade piece, Contagion considers the irony that, while human warfare raged in the trenches, a silent and far deadlier enemy was waging war within the human body itself. Shobana’s choreography echoes  the scientific features of a virus - rapid, random, constantly shape-shifting – where eight female dancers contort, strategise and mutate as they explore both the resilience and the vulnerability of the human body.

The extraordinary work of artist Egon Schiele, himself a victim of the pandemic, is a powerful footnote to the choreography. His depiction of twisted bodies and expressive lines perfectly captures the physical and pychological  anxieties of his times.

In 1918 a Spanish flu pandemic infected one third of the world’s population and killed over 50 million people. Directly exacerbated by troop and civilian migrations from the First World War, the virus killed more people than the war itself.

Shobana Jeyasingh says: "The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic whose centenary is marked this year is beginning to assert itself in our collective memory as one of the most dramatic episodes of global proportions. I very much hope that Contagion will serve as an act of commemoration and remembering.” 

Jenny Waldman, Director of 14-18 NOW, said: “We are proud to commission Contagion as a highlight of our final 14-18 NOW season, in which we continue to engage people in the centenary of the First World War through the lens of art. Shobana Jeyasingh’s new work marks 100 years since one of the deadliest disasters in human history with a powerful exploration of the 1918 pandemic through movement.”

The research for Contagion involved virologists such as Professor John Oxford, Emeritus Professor of virology at the University of London, whose work on the 1918 Spanish flu is world renowned, as well as medical historians and writers including Laura Spinney.

The venues are: Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed; Winchester Great Hall, which contains the greatest symbol of medieval mythology, King Arthur's Round Table; DanceEast, Ipswich; St Gabriel’s Church, Sunderland which was used as a temporary hospital in World War I; IWM North, Salford where the piece will be performed as part of Manchester Science Festival; and the British Library, London.

For Contagion, Shobana Jeyasingh  has collaborated with designers Merle Hensel (set and costume), Yaron Abulafia (lighting) and Nina Dunn (video design) and composer Graeme Miller. The dancers are Avâtara Ayuso, Catarina Carvalho, Emily Pottage, Estela Merlos, Noora Kela, Rachel Maybank, Sunbee Han and Vânia Doutel Vaz.