From the Sadler’s Wells website (March 2020):
Established in 2014, the Elixir Festival is a unique event celebrating lifelong creativity and the contribution of older artists. It was set up to recognise the contribution that older artists make and challenge assumptions about what older people can and want to do.
In its inaugural year, the festival provided 2,500 people with the opportunity to experience older people dancing live and saw 500 older performers grace its stages.
This year’s Elixir Festival will see internationally renowned older artists come together to perform new commissions and existing work by some of the most exciting choreographers working in dance today.
The performances on 19 and 20 June 2020 feature four newly commissioned works making their world premiere as part of Elixir 2020 alongside an extract from a much-celebrated masterpiece.
Working with three older and three younger dancers, Ben Duke creates a funny and moving intergenerational piece. A regular feature of Elixir Festival, the Olivier Award nominated Elixir Ensemble, return to the festival with a new work created by Nicole Beutler.
The final commission is an exciting collaboration between Company of Elders, Sadler’s Wells’ resident inspirational over-60s performance company, and National Theater & Concert Hall, Taipei, working with B.DANCE. In Floating Flowers, in memory of choreographer Tsai Po-cheng’s father, dancers represent lanterns floating on water, depicting the transience of life and death. This award-winning piece celebrates cultural exchange between two international groups of older non-professional dancers.
Louise Lecavalier completes the programme with an extract of her stunning piece So Blue, in which she risks all in the high-voltage atmosphere of this radical, raw, and haunting work set to the visceral music of Mercan Dede.