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Station House Opera is a British performance art and theatre company. It was founded in 1980 by Julian Maynard Smith, who is still[ when? ] artistic director. Station House Opera had a long working relationship with Stichting Mickery Workshop in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Julian Maynard Smith (son of the evolutionary geneticist John Maynard Smith) and Miranda Payne founded the company in 1980, and Maynard Smith remains its artistic director. Maynard studied fine and performing arts in the 1970s and works as an actor, writer, performer and director. The company has worked with artists and others from many different fields. The work varies enormously in scale, appearance and location and uses spectacle to explore the intimate relationship between people and the environment they inhabit. Described as "Brilliant...one of Britain's most inventive experimental theatre companies" [1] and "unlike anything you've ever seen before", [2] the company has created spectacular projects in a variety of locations all over the world, from New York's Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage to Dresden's historic Frauenkirche and Salisbury Cathedral. More recently the work has been uniquely created for more intimate spaces in Europe, Asia and South America. Based in London, it is managed by Artsadmin.
The company has created over thirty productions. While some are stand-alone pieces, others form groups that explore general themes using a particular material or methodology. The first few plays, including Natural Disasters, were a part of Station House Opera's series of architectural performances which the company is still well known for. "Natural Disasters" was a show in which Station House Opera explored the medium of flying and spatial freedom. A lot of productions they have done involve the use of fly-ins and the 3-dimensional space. Many productions followed after that. Drunken Madness, Scenes From A New Jericho and Cuckoo destabilised the mundane physical world of the performers by taking the action precariously to the air.
These projects opened up the doors for the company to take more risks and in 1989 The Bastille Dances was commissioned to celebrate the bicentenary of the French Revolution. The piece started from the image of the revolution and continued to show the storming and demolition of Bastille and the scattering of its stones throughout Paris. The Bastille Dances was commissioned by Theatre de Cherboug and the London International Festival of theatre and funded by Arts Council of Great Britain. This opened up the company to begin touring during the 1990s. Other works similar to Bastille Dances, Dedesenn nn rrrrrr and The Salisbury Proverbs, used loose breeze blocks with which performers built, demolished and rebuilt structures of an architectural scale. Snakes and Ladders, Roadmetal Sweetbread and Mare's Nest used video projection to generate doubled versions of the action on stage that posed questions of perception and interpretation. Recent work such as Live from Paradise, Play on Earth, and The Other Is You has concentrated on video streaming over the internet to bring performances in different parts of the world together in the creation of a single event that is both physical and virtual. These works are meant to create an event that is physical and virtual.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to theatre:
The Opéra Bastille is a modern opera house in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, France. Inaugurated in 1989 as part of President François Mitterrand's Grands Travaux, it became the main facility of the Paris National Opera, France's principal opera company, alongside the older Palais Garnier; most opera performances are shown at the Bastille along with some ballet performances and symphony concerts, while Palais Garnier presents a mix of opera and ballet performances.
Lilian Mary Baylis CH was an English theatrical producer and manager. She managed the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells theatres in London and ran an opera company, which became the English National Opera (ENO); a theatre company, which evolved into the English National Theatre; and a ballet company, which eventually became The Royal Ballet.
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Antony Tudor was an English ballet choreographer, teacher and dancer. He founded the London Ballet, and later the Philadelphia Ballet Guild in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., in the mid-1950s.
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DV8 Physical Theatre was a physical theatre company based at Artsadmin in London, United Kingdom. It was officially founded in 1986 by Lloyd Newson (1986–2015), Michelle Richecoeur (1986–1988) and Nigel Charnock. Lloyd Newson led the company as choreographer and artistic director from its inception, apart from the production My Sex, Our Dance (1986), which was co-created and performed with Nigel Charnock. DV8 officially ended in April 2022 when Lloyd Newson announced his retirement via the company web page.
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S. Ama Wray, known formally as Sheron Wray, is a professor of dance at the University of California, Irvine, USA. She is a British dancer, teacher, choreographer and theatre director. She studied under Jane Dudley at the London Contemporary Dance School. She later performed with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and the Rambert Dance Company before forming her own company called JazzXchange in 1992. She is presently an associate professor of dance at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine.
The physically integrated dance movement is part of the disability culture movement, which recognizes and celebrates the first-person experience of disability, not as a medical model construct but as a social phenomenon, through artistic, literary, and other creative means.
Digital Performance refers to the use of computers as an interface between a creator, consumer of images, and sounds in a wide range of artistic applications. It is performance that incorporates and integrates computer technologies and techniques. Performers can incorporate multimedia into any type of production whether it is live on a theatre stage, or in the street. Anything as small as video recordings or a visual image classifies the production as multimedia. When the key role in a performance is the technologies, it is considered a digital performance. This can be as simple as making projections on a screen for a live audience or as complex as planning and putting on a show online.
Ballet Pixelle is a ballet company founded in 2006 by choreographer Inarra Saarinen. Saarinen still serves as artistic director and choreographer. Ballet Pixelle is the first dance company to perform completely in virtual reality. Its goal is to explore and extend physical and virtual dance and movement and to blend those realities.
Lloyd Newson is a director, dancer and choreographer. He formed DV8 Physical Theatre and has led the company since its inception in 1986. He studied psychology and social work at Melbourne University and after graduating began his dancing career in New Zealand, initially as a dancer but later also as a choreographer.
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Santee Smith Tekaronhiáhkhwa is a Canadian Mohawk multidisciplinary artist, dancer, designer, producer, and choreographer. She has used her voice and research to create dance works representing Indigenous identities. She is an advocate for Indigenous performances and is one of Canada's most dominating dance artists. Santee Smith has amassed multiple awards throughout her career and in 2019, she was appointed Chancellor of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
