Photos: Jemima Yong
In The Last Quartet Seke imagines a “last work” or a “last attempt” at choreography. Four dancers enter and exit the stage through gaps in the audience, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in trios and sometimes all together. They are figuring everything out through movement - how to begin, how to connect, how to change, how to end - leaving fleeting traces of scenes, relationships, and characters for the audience to contemplate. They share the stage with composer Jamie McCarthy, whose elegiac, electro-acoustic score evokes the slow and sudden changes of weather systems and cloud formations.
Seke is thinking about this “last work” as an opportunity to go back to the beginning; back to the core elements of dancing and music, to imagine them anew. With no fixed sequences of movement and no fixed order of events, The Last Quartet offers a glimpse of limitless possibilities and new beginnings in this current moment where hope is scarce and futures lie everywhere in ruins.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time”
- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Creative Team
Choreographer: Seke Chimutengwende
Dancers: Temitope Ajose, Charlie Ashwell, Seke Chimutengwende and Matthias Sperling
Composer: Jamie McCarthy
Dramaturg: Efrosini Protopapa
Costume designer: Annie Pender
Lighting designer: Marty Langthorne
Set designer: Bethany Wells
Production manager: Michael Picknett
Producers: Metal & Water
Research for this work was recently supported by a residency in Choreodrome at The Place in London.
Touring from September 2025 onwards.
If you are interested in programming this work, please contact Lauren Wright: lauren@metalwater.co
The Last Quartet