Brighton Festival is thrilled to announce that the 2014 Guest Director of Brighton Festival is critically acclaimed choreographer, musician, composer and performer Hofesh Shechter.
Recognised as one of the UK’s most exciting contemporary artists, Shechter is renowned for creating raw, physical live contemporary dance pieces set to his own, highly-charged, atmospheric musical scores. His eponymous Company are a Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival resident company, and their brand new work Sun – co-commissioned by Brighton Festival – will open the three week arts extravaganza on Saturday 3 May when it comes ‘home’at the conclusion of its first world tour.
As Guest Director, Hofesh Shechter follows in the footsteps of visual artist Anish Kapoor (2009), musician Brian Eno (2010), Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi (2011), actress and human rights campaigner Vanessa Redgrave (2012) and poet, author and former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen (2013) in shaping the Brighton Festival programme.
Hofesh Shechter said, ‘Brighton has a magic to it that no one can explain. Finding a place where one can develop and grow artistically is a delicate thing, an important thing. Brighton Dome and Brighton Festival have been an inspiring, energising and encouraging place for my company and me in the last 5 years. We’ve enjoyed the buzz, the lightness, energy, and the unexplainable essence of Brighton. We have resided in its cultural heart – Brighton Dome, and the pulsating artistic heart of the Dome is the annual Festival. I’m so excited and honoured to have been invited to lead on this inspiring event and I feel a rush of excitement about the ideas I can contribute. To be asked to lead this amazing event in 2014, to be asked to inspire, energise, encourage… well, delighted, is just a boring word.’
Andrew Comben, Chief Executive of Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival said, ‘We’re very pleased that Hofesh Shechter is our Guest Director for Brighton Festival 2014. As the artistic director of our resident company Hofesh Shechter Company, it has been exciting for us and our audiences to experience first-hand his ascent to becoming a major force on the international contemporary dance scene. Hofesh’s instinctive understanding of Brighton and our Festival has been a great starting point for our planning, and I feel it’s particularly pertinent that he steps into the role in 2014 following a highly successful five years of working together. Hofesh’s appointment as Guest Director continues a trend set by his predecessors – his work and creative vision contains that rare quality and sense of adventure that sparks the imaginations of a much wider audience beyond his own discipline. With such an eclectic artist at the helm, Brighton Festival 2014 is set to be a very exciting one indeed.’
Hofesh Shechter’s appointment as Guest Director is the culmination of a five year relationship between the choreographer and the organisation. Fresh from being named the first resident company at Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival in 2008, Hofesh Shechter Company’s dramatic Brighton Dome Concert Hall debut In your rooms / Uprising was followed by back-to-back world premières of two specially-commissioned works; The Art of Not Looking Back (Brighton Festival 2009) and Political Mother (Brighton Festival 2010). In 2009, Brighton Festival also commissioned Hofesh’s Bangers and Mash; a youth community project featuring over 100 young dancers and musicians, and in 2013 Brighton Festival commissioned Nomad Land; a collaborative dance and film project that explored the energy and complexity of male relationships. Brighton Dome has also played host to evenings of brand-new work choreographed and presented by Hofesh Shechter Company dancers called In Good Company and, following its international success, the return of Political Mother to the venue in 2012.
Brighton Festival – an annual celebration of music, theatre, dance, circus, art, film, literature, debate, outdoor and family events – will take place in venues across the city and beyond from 3 to 25 May 2014.
The first show revealed as part of Brighton Festival 2014’s programme is Hofesh Shechter’s new full length piece Sun. Opening on four dates across three continents this autumn, the Sun world tour will make its final performances of its first world tour at the opening weekend of Brighton Festival 2014. With an expanded company of 14 world-class dancers and an eclectic soundtrack composed by Shechter himself, this new work tells of the darkness of Shechter’s emotive and often angry world from which emerges a bright white light dancing out of the smoke and chaos. Sun sees Shechter work once again alongside his close collaborator Lee Curran, the Olivier Award-nominated lighting designer.
The full Brighton Festival 2014 programme details will be announced on Tuesday 25 February 2014.