MEET IPSWICH BASKETBALL PLAYERS, SHOOT SOME HOOPS AND WATCH A BRAND-NEW BASKETBALL INSPIRED PERFORMANCE.
DanceEast and Ipswich Basketball Club have joined forces in advance of The Spalding Suite, a new performance coming to the Jerwood DanceHouse on the 29 and 30 May as part of PULSE Festival.
“We are delighted to be supporting DanceEast with their promotion of The Spalding Suite. The basketball industry is ever-growing and it is a key priority for us to develop our profile in the local community. Dance and basketball go hand in hand in terms of the need to be fit, healthy, athletic and disciplined.” Nick Drane, Academy Director and Head Team Coach.
In The Spalding Suite Six dynamic performers, including UK beatboxing champion MC Zani, mix live beatboxing, hip hop, music, moves and poetry. The performers take the audience from the fleeting high of the score and the robust camaraderie of the team, to the poignant lows of a body too worn to play the game.
Conceived by Inua Ellams and directed by Benji Reid the performance is inspired by the UK’s basketball sub-culture. Seen from a British perspective, The Spalding Suite gets to the heart and soul of the gravity-defying game and delves into the hopes and dreams of those who play it.
Nick Drane, on UK basketball culture: “Basketball in the UK doesn’t get the coverage it gets in other countries. In almost every other country in the world, basketball is the second most popular team sport behind football. What is frustrating for us in the country is that statistically basketball IS also our second most popular sport, it is played more than Rugby or Cricket. It has a great appeal to young people in urban areas and the street/hip-hop culture attached to it gives the game a huge amount of ‘street cred’. However, in this country it is difficult to watch any sport other than Football on the television and thus making people aware of its benefits at the highest levels is hard.”
Nick Drane: “Ipswich Basketball are always recruiting and always looking to better ourselves. Such is our growth that we now attract players from all across the south of England. We play in the second tier of British Basketball and operate at a professional level. Many of our young academy players end up playing and studying abroad, receiving scholarship offers from top US Colleges. We currently have seven players from our junior set up in the States”.
Audience members on Friday night will get the chance to shoot some hoops and practise tricks with some of the best players in the country, including Luke Mascall-Wright and Sam Newman (who have become the latest players from the club to be recruited to play College Basketball in America).
Dates: Friday 29 May | 9.00pm and Saturday 30 May | 7.30pm
Tickets: £12, £9 concessions
Venue: DanceEast, Jerwood DanceHouse, Foundry Lane, Ipswich IP4 1DW
Box Office: 01473 295230 | danceeast.co.uk
