Radiohead's music setting for summer season ballet

Published on Monday 7 July 2008 10:27

A BALLET set to music by rock band Radiohead is being produced by Scotland's national dance company in Edinburgh.

Scottish Ballet are preparing to take excerpts of the ballet, Ride the Beast, on the road all over Scotland as part of the company's summer season.

The performance is set to music by the popular Oxford-based band and choreographed by controversial American dance master Stephen Petronio.

He said: "Radiohead's music is a brilliant investigation of achingly modern taste. They sail through genre and form effortlessly and passionately, and their music demands a physical response from me that bypasses reason.

"I have chosen the songs for various reasons – personal pleasure, their ability to propel, a desire to hit some peaks in Radiohead's history, and ultimately their ability to shape a world I wanted to move these dancers through. Creep, their first hit, is a personal anthem and sung with such animal passion that it was just too good to pass up."

The show also features costumes by New York fashion designer Benjamin Cho and will be performed alongside other dances set to music by Liszt, Bach, Parisian musician Colleen and Mercury Music Prize 2007 nominees Basquiat Strings.

Ride The Beast will be performed at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh later this year as part of Scottish Ballet's autumn season.