MY FIERCE IGNORANT STEP to Make UK Premiere at Sadler's Wells
Ten dancers explore memory, adolescence and collective resilience set to influences from Mikis Theodorakis.
Minimalist Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos will bring the UK premiere of My Fierce Ignorant Step to Sadler's Wells, Friday 3 – Saturday 4 November.
Following his 2025 Rose International Dance Prize win for LARSEN C., Papadopoulos returns with a performance about the euphoria of being alive. Optimistic, extroverted, this new work revisits the urgency, hope and fierce conviction of youth - exploring how joy emerges through collective effort, resistance and shared experience.
In My Fierce Ignorant Step, Papadopoulos seeks to consciously process the influence of of Mikis Theodorakis' monumental musical work Axion Esti, set to the poetry of Odysseas Elytis, exploring how it lives within him as a shared, collective memory.
For the choreographer, the initial impulse for creating My Fierce Ignorant Step is rooted in the sonic memories of his childhood and youth that he shares with many other Greeks; these are collective memories tied to the fate of this country, even if that is not always visible. Created in response to a world of political uncertainty and collective fatigue, My Fierce Ignorant Step looks back to the boundless belief of adolescence, when friendship and togetherness made change feel possible. Free from nostalgia, it draws on that sense of freedom and connection as a force for the present.
In Papadopoulos' choreography, memories and sounds, voices and bodies resonate like musical instruments, gradually building towards a shared exhilaration. Ten dancers move as one, marching to what lies ahead. Their breath becomes a voice that guides each step: sometimes expansive, sometimes restrained, but always firm and determined. As breath becomes rhythm, and rhythm becomes movement, momentum gathers in a constantly swelling current, celebrating the exhilaration of moving together and the resilience found in community.
This is Papadopoulos' first work at Sadler's Wells following his 2025 Rose International Dance Prize win for LARSEN C., marking the return of one of Europe's most distinctive choreographic voices.
Christos Papadopoulos, now one of Europe's most distinctive choreographic voices, won the inaugural Rose International Dance Prize for LARSEN C. in 2025. He invested the prize money into the creation of My Fierce Ignorant Step, making this the first work to be in part funded by the Prize.
Christos Papadopoulos said: "I am excited for the UK premiere of My Fierce Ignorant Step at Sadlers Wells Theatre, made possible by The Rose International Dance Prize win. The genesis of the work came from a desire to reconnect with a feeling I had in my adolescent years. I remember that lust for life, the speed, the unwavering drive, the sense that anything was possible. This work is my attempt to revisit that feeling and with it, to regain that strength, that optimism, and that sense of “together.” I have to remind myself that hoping is already an act of resistance and that such courage was neither naïve nor quaint at all."
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