Alastair Spalding, Sadler’s Wells’ Chief Executive and Artistic Director, today announced that the theatre is looking for a fourth London venue, which it hopes will open in just four years’ time.

Not content with two proscenium spaces (the main stage, with seating for 1,500, and the Peacock Theatre off the Strand, seating 1,000), and a smaller, studio space (the Lilian Baylis at Sadler’s Wells, seating 180), Spalding is looking for a site that will allow the theatre to develop a 500-seater, mid-sized space, in Islington, or elsewhere in central-ish London.

Spalding has identified a gap. At the moment the theatre is unable to host many artists’ work that is too small-scale for the main house, but whose admirers overspill the Baylis.

“The public appetite for dance has never been greater,” he says, with figures to back him up: half a million people attended a Sadler’s Wells performance in 2012/13, including almost 70,000 people who had never before been to the theatre.

This new plan is buttressed by £5 million planned for commissioning new dance, and £1 million, over three years, for supporting young artists in their early works.