Iphigenie Auf Tauris

One of the most influential choreographers of our time, Pina Bausch has inspired generations of audiences and artists with an impact that is hard to overestimate. Her death in 2009 leaves a legacy that will be felt for generations to come.

Her company Tanztheater Wuppertal returns to Sadler's Wells with Iphigenie auf Tauris, based on Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera. First created in 1974 and very rarely performed, Iphigenie comes to London for the first time.

Regarded by many as Gluck's masterpiece, Iphigenie fuses dance, music chorus and solo arias into a dramatic whole. Gluck conceived the work as Greek tragedy, dealing with the most profound and intense emotions.

Pina Bausch's staging uses her full company to convey the drama of the opera, with the singers ranged at either side of the stage. The grandeur and purity of the score is conveyed through dance images of extraordinary beauty and power; this is Bausch's choreography at its most harmonious and lyrical.

Language / Singing / Surtitles: The opera is sung in German, but there will be no surtitles. This is primarily a dance piece, set to the music of an opera, that happens to have live music. Singers will be standing in the Side Galleries.