Associate Artist Jules Cunningham offers a tender exploration and disruption of normativity.

Pigeons and CROW are connected by the composers and performers Julius Eastman and Pauline Oliveros, who worked from the 1960s onwards. Each of their works touched on themes of queerness, and they experienced marginalisation based on race, sexuality and mental illness.

CROW is a reimagining of a performance between Pauline Oliveros and Julius Eastman that happened nearly fifty years ago in New York. Drawing on those experiments to move away from meticulous, technical choreography, Jules and collaborators explore a more spacious world of responsive ritual, symbolism and connected solitude, qualities associated with the crow. With a soundscore by JD Samson (Le Tigre) and design by Julie Verhoeven, Jules and Harry Alexander will perform alongside guest musicians, not to re-create what has been, but for what might be needed right now.

Pigeons, by contrast, is irritated by its own relentlessness – with extraordinary dancers including collaborators Harry Alexander and Yu-Chien Cheng dancing nonstop to Eastman’s extraordinary 30-minute composition, Gay Guerilla, from 1979. Working with pigeon groupings and behaviour, the dancers explore ways of being alone and together, disruption and distraction.

Creative Team

Choreographed by Jules Cunningham
Performed by Harry Alexander, Nafisah Baba, Yu-Chien Cheng, Jules Cunningham, Matthias Sperling
CROW Soundscore: JD Samson
Lighting Design: Joshie Harriette
Design for CROW: Julie Verhoeven
Costume Design for Pigeons: Loe D’Arcy
Outside Eye: Orrow Bell
Access Consultancy: Quiplash
Producer: Kat Bridge
Assistant Producer: Rosa Manzi Reid
Press/ PR Consultant: Lydia Wharf

Read the freesheet

Part of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival

Pigeons is a Stanley Arts Queer Arts Commissions in collaboration with Raze Collective and part of This Is Croydon’s Queer Arts Development Strand. CROW and Pigeons are created in and amongst different communities moving together and drawing in South London with residencies at and support from Bethlem Gallery. Created with public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England

Co-presented by Sadler’s Wells and Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels

Header image description: On a patch of grass next to a large tree are three dancers photographed in black and white. All three are mid-step and facing to the side, lifting their left legs up and raising their arms out to the sides. Behind them are low shrubs and more trees with sparse leaves as well as a multi-storey car park and industrial blocks of flats. The area looks to be a housing estate.

Header image © Studio Long