The Grit in the Oyster

Commissioned by Sadler's Wells for their 2014 programme Thomas Adés: See the Music, Hear the Dance, celebrating the music of one of the UK's most respected composers, The Grit in the Oyster sets three dancers against Adés' Piano Quintet. 

Plotting a pathway through the rich and diverse textures of Adés' music, The Grit in the Oyster is a playful study of repetition and change, exploring the sonata form in which the Piano Quintet is written and the theme of metamorphosis inherent in it. 

The three dancers, bound into a repetitive structure of movement, are held together by its latent inner workings, drawing them relentlessly back in and towards each other. When eventually one of them does break free a process of transformation begins to unfold.