52 Portraits
A film series by Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion
and Hugo Glendinning
Produced by Sadler’s Wells
In 2016, choreographer Jonathan Burrows, composer Matteo Fargion and video maker Hugo Glendinning set out on an ambitious task: to film a short gestural portrait of a different dancer or performer, every week for one year.
To celebrate the upcoming 10-year anniversary of this incredible project, Digital Stage presents all 52 of the original portraits, listed here in the order that they were created and released.
Find out more about this project
Jump to:
January – March April – June
July – September October – December
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
About 52 Portraits
In 2016, choreographer Jonathan Burrows, composer Matteo Fargion and video maker Hugo Glendinning invited each artist involved in this series to sit at a table. They drew from their own background and work to create a portrait of their life as a dance artist. Each portrait was filmed in silence, then set to music with words drawn from six questions beginning, “What was the first room you danced in?”
The artists invited came from diverse backgrounds and methodologies, but had all in some way worked before with one or other of the curators. Some of the artists were captured at the beginning of their careers, and some were already familiar faces at Sadler’s Wells.
This relaunch of 52 Portraits is dedicated to Robert Cohan (1925-2021), one of the founding artists of British contemporary dance; also Mary O’Mahony (1942-2024) who was for many years a member of Sadler’s Wells Company Of Elders; and David Hemsley (1940-2024) who didn’t come from dance, but so courageously and wonderfully danced a portrait with his daughter Alexandrina.