Opera North and Phoenix Dance Theatre collaborate on new dance work set to Mozart's Requiem

The other cities mentioned above can only wish they were home to an internationally renowned opera company and a similarly lauded dance company; Leeds doesn’t have to wish.

In Opera North and Phoenix Dance, that’s exactly what the city has – and this year the two organisations are coming together to make a contribution to Leeds 2023.

Requiem: Journeys of the Soul, a collaboration between Opera North, Phoenix Dance and the South African companies Jazzart Dance Theatre and Cape Town Opera is the kind of international, hugely exciting work that can emerge from Leeds when the city’s cultural big hitters come together.

The project began a couple of years ago when the two Leeds companies collaborated on West Side Symphonic Dances. Choreographed by the man who was in charge of Phoenix at the time, Dane Hurst, the piece immediately deserved a follow up and a new piece of contemporary dance set to Mozart’s Requiem is the result.

It’s the kind of genuinely exciting and enticing work of international pedigree that is coming out of Leeds in this year where it finally foregrounds culture. It also hasn’t come easy.

“Initially it was difficult to create movement to Mozart’s Requiem; it’s such a complete and overwhelming piece of music that you can just end up listening to it and, before you know it, an hour has passed,” says Hurst.

“I would create a few movements to one of the pieces but continually felt something was missing from my first steps and early approach to the work. I questioned the essence of the movements and tried to see how the body could convey the enormity of loss, grief and sadness felt and experienced by millions of people who have lost those dearest to them.”

Hurst felt he had to go back to the beginning, throw everything out and start again. He consulted his collaborator Warren Petersen and along with photographer-film-maker Robyn Walker, took a trip to Cederberg Mountains, four hours from Hurst’s native Cape Town in South Africa.

“The trip to Cederberg was focused around capturing the spirit, energy and fragility of the human body found alone with the vast and open landscape; exposed to the elements with only the first few bars of the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem as the stimulus,” says Hurst.

“The unfolding and awakening dance was like emerging from a deep sleep, an inner cocoon, a sacred space. It was a return to the centre, to the beginning.”

When, post-pandemic, he returned full-time to South Africa from his position as Phoenix Dance artistic director, Hurst was appointed artistic director of Jazzart Dance Theatre in Cape Town.

“With me being back in South Africa, it felt appropriate that there should be a response piece to requiem from a South African composer.”

The result is Neo Muyanga’s After Tears: After a Requiem, which will receive its world premiere as part of the double bill of Requiem: Journeys of the Soul.

Richard Mantle, Opera North’s CEO, says: “We wanted to work with Dane on the Mozart Requiem in response to the Covid pandemic. Mozart’s sublime, profoundly human music makes it into a universal act of mourning which has touched the souls of countless listeners for more than two centuries. By bringing contemporary dance to the Requiem and commissioning a response to Mozart’s final, unfinished work from a contemporary composer we aim to create a requiem for our times."

The result, Mantle says, is a ‘union of talents’, with eight dancers from Phoenix, eight from Jazzart and four solo singers – two from the UK and two from South Africa, all joined by the chorus and the orchestra of Opera North.

It’s impossible to overstate how impressive that collection is as a collaboration and, while it would have been nice to see such cooperation in the past, at least Leeds has recognised the power it has at its fingertips now.

Requiem: Journeys of the Soul, Leeds Grand Theatre, May 26 to June 4.