Sadler’s Wells East Will Be Home to a Choreographic Development Program, Hip-Hop Academy, and More

Sadler’s Wells East is due to open later this year in London’s Queen Elizabeth Park, site of the 2012 Olympic Games. The 550-seat auditorium, which sits opposite the Olympic Stadium (now home to West Ham United football club), will be the fourth stage programmed by Sadler’s Wells, the U.K.’s leading contemporary-dance house, joining the original theater and the Lilian Baylis Studio in north London, and the Peacock Theatre in London’s West End.

Sadler’s Wells is already a presenting house, a producer of shows that tour internationally—including the recent U.S. engagements of Kate Prince’s Message in a Bottle, set to the songs of Sting—and a supporter of artists. The theater has 23 associate artists, including the likes of Akram Khan, Sharon Eyal, Oona Doherty, and Crystal Pite, and recently launched the £40,000 Rose International Dance Prize. 

The new mid-scale venue, which also houses six studios, will allow the theater to further expand its work and make a greater diversity of programming from regional and international artists possible. The smaller size of the theater means less financial risk for companies touring to London but leaves plenty of room for artistic risk, according to Sadler’s Wells artistic director and co-CEO Alistair Spalding. “We can be a little more courageous with some of the work,” he says. 

Sadler’s Wells East will also be home to the Rose Choreographic School, a new research initiative through which 13 choreographers will spend two years exploring their practice, with William Forsythe, Trajal Harrell, and Alesandra Seutin on the artistic faculty for the first cohort. “We really want it to be an engine for talent development,” says Spalding. “We want to be developing relationships and building the next generation.”

Fittingly in the year that breaking becomes an Olympic sport, Sadler’s Wells East will also house the U.K.’s first comprehensive hip-hop academy. Academy Breakin’ Convention will offer 16- to 19-year-olds a complete education in the elements of hip hop—breaking, popping, hip-hop social dance, emceeing, deejaying, music production, and graffiti—resulting in a BTEC diploma (equivalent to British A-Levels). It’s led by Jonzi D, artistic director of Sadler’s Wells’ hugely successful annual Breakin’ Convention festival.

Queen Elizabeth Park is in the borough of Newham, in East London, one of the city’s most economically deprived areas. Sadler’s Wells East is neighbor to a number of new outposts of cultural institutions, including V&A East, BBC music studios, and the London College of Fashion, part of the area’s burgeoning regeneration since the London Olympics. There will be a strong focus on community engagement, with a stage in the large foyer for local dance groups to perform on. Spalding hopes to nurture the rich pool of dance talent in East London, an area that has already produced some of the country’s leading hip-hop choreographers, such as Sadler’s Wells associate Botis Seva. The first show announced for the venue’s opening season, Our Mighty Groove, by choreographer Vicki Igbokwe-Ozoagu, will feature young East Londoners among the cast in an immersive production inspired by the transformative power of the club dance floor.

Originally slated to open in 2022, the construction of Sadler’s Wells East has been beset by delays caused by COVID-19 lockdowns and the rising prices of raw materials due to Brexit and the war in Ukraine. Spalding, for one, can’t wait for the doors to finally be open. “It’s been 10 years since the inception of the project,” he says. “So we’re really, really keen to get going now.”