Irish choreographer Emma Martin's Birdboy comes to Sadler's Wells East in London debut this February

Emma Martin /United Fall presents Birdboy in Sadler’s Wells East from Thursday 20 – Saturday 22 February. This is Irish choreographer Martin’s London debut with her first solo work, and her first work for audiences of all ages.  
 
The work is a tribute to all the “weird kids” left on the sidelines, starring performer Kévin Coquelard. He shares the stage with an old Volkswagen and otherworldly creatures representing his emotional landscape.  
 
Using the metaphor of a bird, and its perceived freedom, the piece burrows inside the chaotic and vivid inner world of someone who doesn’t fit in. Through a child’s eyes and combining dance, sound and objects from ethereal balloons to disguises, Birdboy is a journey through a frenzied and beautiful landscape of fear, isolation, fantasy and letting go. 
 
Kévin Coquelard began dance and theatre in France and made his Irish debut with John Scott in 2013, performing in New York and Paris. He has also performed for Philip Connaughton, Catherine Young, Liz Roche Company and Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Oona Doherty. He has toured Birdboy with Emma Martin since the work’s creation in 2019, taking the piece widely in Europe and the UK. 
 
Emma is a choreographer based in Carlow, Ireland. She started her dancing life as a ballet dancer, training and working in Stuttgart and Trier. She went on a prolonged, still continuing, hiatus from ballet, took a degree in Theatre and Russian, whilst reinvigorating her relationship to dance. As a choreographer she made her first show in 2010, and now produces work through her company United Fall since 2018.  She creates multidisciplinary work that has spilled into film, installation, opera and theatre. Her work is sweaty, messy, music-heavy and human, playing between high art and popular culture, combining dance with live music, theatre and distinct visual universes, recent collaborations include Daniel Fox (Gilla Band), Mick Donohoe (Twoc), Dunk Murphy (Sunken Foal) and writer Enda Walsh. 
 
She created Birdboy for her daughter, inspired by our shared experience of growing up and learning to navigate life, society and self-acceptance. 

Performer Kévin Coquelard said: “There’s lots of layers to the piece, but the one which came out really clear for me is one of loneliness, how easy it is to retreat from others, also how exhausting it becomes. There’s something about having to work on accepting yourself before being able to reconnect with others”. 
 
Talking about the work, choreographer Emma Martin said: “I’d never made a work for kids, before this- hard to please audience, but set myself a challenge, when my daughter was around 8, to speak to a kid’s experience of navigating the world in all its glory, but also darkness. At its heart, Birdboy is an appeal to the inner child within all of us – the essence of our humanity – innocent, unique, full of wonder and empathy.”