Artistic Director Mark Ball has announced that this year’s festival will feature even more commissions that in previous years – including three world and ten UK premieres over four weeks.
2016’s festival will see visitors and audiences being able to take part in a wide variety of experiences such as meeting wild Japanese fans, an outré performance star, a body builder, and teenagers with attitude. You can waltz, keep secrets, see a brass band, take revenge and sleep with a stranger. Or how about visiting Roma musicians, refugees, ancient Greeks via Sarah Kane, Falklands War veterans, a Victorian music hall and a circus in a cemetery where the undead welcome you in. Just a few ideas of what to expect from the LIFT festival this year.
The work involved in this year’s LIFT festival comes from all around the globe including: Argentina, Belgium, Greece, Poland, Canada, Japan, Australia, the USA, Lebanon and Syria. Over 30 works will be seen across London in venues that include The Barbican, an East End cemetery and Sadler’s Wells.
LIFT 2016 will open with Taylor Mac and the UK premiere of his journey through the American Songbook at the Hackney Empire on 1st June.
Other highlights of the festival will include: haunting encounters with the dead in a Mile End cemetery in gothic circus from acclaimed Australian company Circa and British electronic musician Lapalux; the UK debut of Poland’s great iconoclastic director Krzysztof Warlikowski in an epic multimedia production of Phaedra(s), a revolutionary interpretation of the Greek masterpiece by Sarah Kane, Wajdi Mouawad and J M Coetzee starring Isabelle Huppert.
LIFT Artistic Director Mark Ball said: ” Does art help us belong? I have met pioneering artists and performers from around the world who connect to the astonishing range of international communities that make up London, and, asking that very question, have made a Festival that investigates how this amazing mix of people adds up to the London I love.”
LIFT 2016 will run at various venues across London from the 1st June to the 2nd July. More detailed information on individual shows in the festival and to book tickets visit: https://www.liftfestival.com/.