DANCE SUITE

A set of baroque dances for the 21st century, Dance Suite channels the sounds of the contemporary dance floor into four vivid and punchy tracks.

Created by composer Alex Groves and performed by pianist, composer and technologist Zubin Kanga, Dance Suite presents as a collection of hyper-pop songs full of kick drums, synths and snares based on the age-old format of the Baroque suite, bringing together classical virtuosity, queer culture and novel technologies.

Performed on the ROLI Seaboard, Dance Suite explores the messy tangle of emotions found on the dancefloor at 2am, and each movement has a little nod back to the baroque form that inspired it.

Genre: Classical contemporary, electronic

This New Music Biennial 2025 event is free, but ticketed. Standing tickets are unallocated and tickets don’t guarantee entry: admission is on a first-come, first-served basis for those with tickets. Please arrive early to avoid disappointment.

This event includes two performances of the same work and a short interview with the creative team in between the two, enabling audiences to experience the second performance with greater insight into the creative process.

Alex Groves is an Ivor Novello Award–nominated composer and curator working across contemporary classical and electronic music. Described as ‘hypnotic’, ‘grungy’ and ‘energising’, his music tickles the mind and the body, sometimes with expansive sonic landscapes and other times with pounding rhythms and infectious hooks.

Zubin Kanga is a pianist, composer, and technologist. For over a decade, he has been at the forefront of curating and creating interdisciplinary musical programmes that seek to explore and redefine what it means to be a performer through interactions with new technologies. Since 2020, he has been leading Cyborg Soloists, a major music-technology research project, which is unlocking new possibilities in the interaction of live musicians and AI, interactive visuals, biosensors and new hybrid instruments.

PRXLUDES is a contemporary music magazine, resource, and organisation dedicated to the promotion and celebration of the work of emerging composers. Directed by UK-based composers Zygmund de Somogyi and Patrick Ellis, PRXLUDES specialises in in-depth coverage of composers, ensembles, and organisations promoting the work of emerging artists.

Alex Groves’ Dance Suite is commissioned by Zubin Kanga as part of Cyborg Soloists and supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London.

New Music Biennial is a three-day festival celebrating the best new music across all genres from the country’s most exciting composers – and in 2025, for the first time, it’s coming to venues around Bradford.