The Latest News
Impulse Power
Tuesday, 22 April, 2008
OK, this is absolutely, and with no exceptions, the last festival that we are going to write about this year. Is that clear? Good, then let's move on because Impulstanz 2008 is on the horizon and those crazy kids in Austria are looking for some publicity!
The annual fun fair of dance is held in Vienna and combines a massive workshop programme with not one but two dance festivals. There's the big festival for the big kids with acts like Rosas, The Forsythe Company, Akram Khan and Company, Robyn Orlin and much more.
Then you have the festival for the little kids (those new to choreography) called 8:Tension. Here you can see Matjita Ferlin, Pere Faua, Olivier Dubios, Ayse Orhon and others. Never heard of them have you? Well that's the point, they are presenting work on the big stage for the first time and they may or may not be worth checking out.
Complementing this heaving mass of dance is the workshop programme with over 200 separate classes to take part in. Covering everything from contact improvisation to jazz and classical ballet. If you want it, you can probably find it. The teaching staff are far to numerous to even think about mentioning
If that's not enough you also have the chance to take part in so-called 'Coaching Projects', week long intensives with one teacher where you spend the whole day learning how to be a tree or something! Or you might learn something practical, you never know!
Impulstanz is unique in so far as they gather hundreds of dancers in both a workshop and performance context for an entire month in one place. If you want to know what's going on in Bulgarian contact improvisation then Vianna is the place to be in the summer. Workshops cost about €115 if you're a professional dancer. The more you do the cheaper it gets. As ever, we recommend a week of workshops before you move on, otherwise it can start to grate a little.
Impulstanz 2008 runs from July 10th until August 10th in Vienna, Austria. More info on their website.
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On A Mission
Tuesday, 15 April, 2008
If you're planning a dance festival can we ask one thing of you? Please leave it until the end of the year to launch the thing because if any more dance festivals get under way in the next few week then somethings going to give!
The Big Mission, organised by State of Emergency, is a bi-annual gathering of the best and the brightest black dance makers from across this small yet festival packed island.
Not content with simply having performances there will also be a basket full of master classes, debates (we love a good shouting match! Ed!), seminars and lot's more. State of Emergency say of this festival;
"The Big Mission Festival '08 is a unique three-day national and international dance extravaganza, packed full of cutting edge performances, master classes, debates and networking opportunities. Celebrating the range and diversity of black talent, this vibrant festival gives promoters, artists and dance enthusiasts the chance to watch, participate, create and discuss some of the best professional dance around."
Kicking off the whole affair is a speech by the former Olympic athlete and "star" of Strictly Come Dancing, Colin Jackson. Since we've never heard of him we shall move swiftly along.
Some of the folks presenting their work include; Irven Lewis Dance Theatre, Freddie Opoku-Addaie/Jagged Antics, ACE Dance and Music, Bawren Tavaziva and Bakari Lindsay and Karensa Louis.
If you want to know more then hit the link below and all will be revealed. The Big Mission runs from May 8th until May 10th in Swindon. Ticketing information is available from their website.
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Dancing Planet
Sunday, 6 April, 2008
The UK is becoming increasingly full of dance festivals. Just this year we have had, Resolution, BDE 08, and Spring Loaded. Still to come is the International Dance Festival Birmingham, The Big Mission and Dance Umbrella. Not to mention to many, many smaller scale festivals and gatherings of dance companies that happen throughout the year.
Now we have 'Dancing The World' (DtW), to be held in Newcastle upon Tyne and various other places around this particular region from May 2nd.
In keeping with the ongoing theme of internationalism and what not the DtW festival will feature a number of UK based companies and several from various parts of the globe.
A brief glance on the UK side of things reveals the presence of two heavy hitters in the the wacky world of contemporary dance. DV8 make a return to UK performing with 'To be Straight With You' a no holds barred look at intolerance, religion and sexuality. See how clever the title is?
Next we have Phoenix Dance Theatre with 'Cattle Call' a work alluded to in our recent interview with the company's director Javier De Frutos and featuring music by Richard Thomas. This particular work should be of great interest to all dancers because it's all about auditions, which we know more than a few of you are familiar with!
On the international side of things there will be shows by Rui Horta, Rennie Harlin, Aracaladanza, Zero Visibility Corps and Corpus from Canada. The latter company's work features the dancers pretending to be sheep, replete with sheep costumes, and will be performed live, outdoors at Carlisle Park in Morpeth. If you miss that you'll definitely be missing out!
The entire festival features more than 20 performances from straight up dance theatre to the more bizzare musings of the aforementioned sheep show!
Dancing the World runs from May 2nd until May 24 in and around the North East of England. More information and a full list of participating companies are available from the website link below.
[ Dancing The World ]
[ Interview with Javier De Frutos ]
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Septic Frogs
Friday, 4 April, 2008
Twenty dance makers, count 'em, apparently with too much time on their hands, have been selected to take part in the dance competition that never ends, The Place Prize.
The eventual winner of this particular competition has about as much to do with the will of the people as a Presidential election in Zimbabwe but there it sits, like a frog on a water lily floating on the septic pond of life.
When it's all over, after innumerable rounds, votes, glad handing and back slapping, the "winner" gets £25,000 and not a lot else. If they spend more than that making the work then too bad, at least they'll have the memories.
In no particular order the participants are:
Temitope Ajose-Cutting, Aletta Collins, Robin Dingemans, Charlotte Eatock & Rachael Mossom, Simon Ellis, Victoria Fox, Philine Janssens, Darren Johnston, Kyoung-Shin Kim, Saiko Kino, Adam Linder, Jelka Milic, Chisato Minamimura, Colin Poole, Mickael Riviere, Bettina Strickler, Dam Van Huynh, Jose Luis Vidal, Anna Williams and Ben Wright.
The competition gets under way some time soon and keeps going until the fat lady sings, near the end of the year probably. If you need to know more then follow the link, if you have any sense you'll go outside and sit by a lake, relaxing in the spring sunshine with a cool breeze tickling your skin, contemplating better things!
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Dangerous Dance
Wednesday, 26 March, 2008
The up and coming dance festival in Birmingham, suitably titled the International Dance Festival Birmingham, will feature a couple of performances where the creators appear to have taken leave of their senses.
First up we have those crazy kids from Karas, in Japan, with Suburo Teshigawara at the reigns performing the work 'Glass Tooth' (to give it the Japanese title). At first glance it all looks pretty normal. Dancers, choreography, music, sound, lights, etc. Then you take a look at the floor and notice their dancing on a carpet of broken glass!
If you've ever dropped a wine bottle in the kitchen and nimbly stepped around the fragments while you clean up the mess you'll know how hard it is not to cut yourself at least once. Multiply the glass fragments by about 10,000 and choreograph an hour long dance work on it and you'll get some idea of just how mad this work is. Should be worth watching then eh?
Next we have Cas Public, from Canada, with their work 'Diary (Journal intime)'. Although slightly less with the crazy than Karas, this company have decided to test the patience of the technicians by having 1,000 tiny tea lights on stage, all of which will be alight.
The works itself is all about love and relationships and is specifically aimed at teenagers (how sweet, Ed!) but you just know that the person who has to light all of those candles is muttering unpleasant incantations under their breath every night.
You can catch both shows in May during the festival, full details from their website.
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ACE Litigation
Wednesday, 26 March, 2008
Arts Council England's troubles are beginning to multiply as another organisation prepares to take possible legal action over the funding monoliths decision to remove their annual subsidy.
The Waterman's venue in London is claiming that ACE's funding decisions were "flawed and illegal" and they are seeking a judicial review to try and have the funding reinstated.
News of impending legal action follows ACE's announcement that a formal investigation is to take place into their actions leading up to and throughout the entire funding review process.
Union Dance Company are also looking into the possibility of taking ACE to court to review their loss of regular funding.
The theatre lost £416,000 of subsidy and if that funding is not put back in place by March 28th then it's off to the courts.
In a statement on the theatre's website they say;
"We shall use the full force of the law to appeal. Our lawyers have advised us that we have a clear case as there is no foundation to the reasons given for the grant to be cut."
These particular cases are certain to be watched with interest by more than 180 organisations that also lost their funding. If legal action were successful, which is a very long shot at best, and ACE were ordered by a court of law to reinstate funding then the flood gates would undoubtedly open.
Subsequent funding meetings between the two would also be more than a little bit uncomfortable we imagine!
ACE's funding review cut regular subsidy to 194 arts organisation, including 12 dance related organisations and companies, 17 of those decision were subsequently overturned. The decisions that were overturned may provide fuel for Waterman's and Union Dance's legal fires should things go that far.
In a statement, ACE denied being completely useless, or words to that effect.
[ via The Stage ]
[ Waterman's Theatre ]
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What's Going On Here?
Tuesday, 18 March, 2008
The more astute among you, and even those half asleep, will have noticed that Article19 has changed somewhat over the last week or so into its new clothes.
Our latest re-design is version number 9 in our short and somewhat notorious history of delving under the skin of the rather bizarre world of contemporary dance. We only change things around to make things better for you, our dear readers, and easier for us when it comes to publishing new material.
Developing a site of this size, there are more than 1000 pages on here these days, is no small undertaking. With new designs and new code come browser compatibility problems especially with older versions of Internet Explorer (version 6 and below).
Some things may be out of place or just plain weird and if you are using Internet Explorer 5 we can only pity you because what you are looking at right now must be truly horrific.
We'll squash bugs as and when we find them and if you notice something awry then let us know. Here's a list of changes and why, just so you know we don't do this re-building stuff for a laugh!
- Fixed Centred Layout: Keeps content in an easier to read position and reduces blank space to the right of all content.
- Graphics: Unnecessary images, icons and other graphics removed to improve clarity and layout.
- Font Size and Line Height: Larger type and greater line height to ease reading especially on higher resolution monitors.
- Footers: Randomly cycled footers to give access to latest content from all sections of Article19 including Auditions and Shout Posts
- Video Pages: Completely blacked out to enhance viewing experience and pave the way to possible future upgrades to HD sourced video material.
- Internal Feeds: Using Simplepie XML parser to remove need for Feedburner feeds. Improves layout aesthetics and speeds up page loads.
- CSS: Hundreds of lines eliminated from style sheets to improve load times and bring consistency to page layouts.
- Reviews: Archived and removed from main navigation bar.
- Photos: Added to main navigation bar. Photo pages altered to match video pages.
- Search: Moved to consistent location on all pages, it's up there at the top incase you missed it.
- Ad Graphics: Consistent typefaces and layout altered to improve aesthetics, and reduce intrusion with the content.
Other changes have been made under the hood to make life easier for us. The entire site should be converted to the new design by the end of this week. Don't panic if a page pops up still in its old threads, it will be dealt with shortly.
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ACE Investigated, Denies Being Useless!
Friday, 14 March, 2008
The Stage newspaper is reporting that Arts Council England (ACE) is to be formally investigated over the perceived bungling of their recent funding review.
Baroness Genista McIntosh (stop laughing at the back), a member of the UK's House of Lords, has been asked to look into the matter by ACE's new Chief Executive Alan Davey.
The funding giant came under increasingly heavy, metaphorical, fire for some, if not all, of the decisions they made to remove 194 arts organisations from the regular, 3 year funding programme. One funding cut, that was later overturned, was a plan to stop funding The Exeter Northcott Theatre. This decision was made all the more puzzling following a £2.1Million refit partially funded by ACE themselves.
Sadly, there will be no formal, televised questioning of the protagonists under oath like we see from the US House of Representatives. Everything will take place behind closed doors so the most incompetent people can protect their anonymity, their jobs and we can all pretend ACE is still competent "so those consulted are able to speak in confidence", according to The Stage.
We should point out that this investigation has actually been called in by ACE and ACE will report the final results sometime in the summer. The House of Lords are not elected by anybody to do anything are are pretty much accountable to nobody. It's all about transparency, openness and responsibility readers!
For their part ACE denied that they were completely useless, or words to that effect.
The report will be published, in part, sometime in the summer.
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The Bonnies
Sunday, 17 February, 2008
As annual awards go the Bonnie Bird Awards are not up there with the Oscars or even the thoroughly pointless Critics Circle Awards but they do at least serve some practical purpose for the recipients.
This time out the winners of the £1,500 choreographic development funding are Anais Bouts, Katie Green and Matthias Sperling. To our chagrin we have yet to encounter the first two dance makers but Matthias Sperling's new Work 'Riff' is available for previewing on this very website.
Although the press release sates that the funding is "to support and nurture new and emerging choreographers in the UK." that basically means these guys can pay rent while working on their dance making, at least for a few months.
In addition to the choreography awards there is also the 'Marion North Mentoring Scheme', won this year by Sean Graham. He will spend the next year being mentored by Robert Hylton of Robert Hylton Urban Classicism, the company that was just stripped of its Arts Council England RFO funding! Ouch.
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Yawwwwwwwnnnnn.............
Wednesday, 23 January, 2008
The Critics Circle (don't call them the magic circle because they get really mad) have announced their latest slew of awards for this year and the results are full of surprises. You're not buying that are you? Didn't think so, let's just try and get through this together shall we?
Darcy Bussell managed to walk away with "The Patron's Award" for the person who has done most to raise the profile of dance before buggering off to Australia. Ok, we added the last part but you get the idea.
"A National Dance Awards Special Award" went to Birmingham Royal Ballet for shamelessly exploiting disruptive kids on a sugar and lord knows what else high introducing "difficult" kids to ballet and putting them on stage in Romeo and Juliet. They put the whole exercise on Channel 4 television and everybody had a good laugh, probably. (I'm not sure this whole piece belongs in the news section you know! Ed!)
The "Award's Award For Mentioning The Word Award in the Award's Title Award" went to the Critics Circle Award Naming Committee but, bizarrely, they didn't show up to accept the gong because they were at the Robin Howard Theatre writing crap reviews about Resolution or something. We might be making that up though.
Russia's Bolshoi Ballet walked off with three awards for something and nothing and Wayne McGregor won an award by default because there is, apparently, some kind of international decree about awards ceremonies and Wayne McGregor winning something. Mr McGregor accepted his award wearing the same t-shirt he's had for the last 12 years (allegedly).
Article19 didn't win an award for anything which we think is bloody outrageous. I mean, look how shiny we are for crying out loud!
We're reading through the press release and losing the will to live. If you really care who won what then you can read the results at the link below. We didn't even get an invite to the party but there is a standing order to shoot us on sight if we so much as cross the threshold of the Royal Opera House!
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Resolution Go For 08
Wednesday, 2 January, 2008
If you're looking to kick off the new year with some dance making from the freshest dance makers the world has to offer then look no further than Resolution 08 which gets underway tomorrow in London.
For the next two months, three acts a night, except Sundays, will offer 15-20 minute works at the Robin Howard Theatre. The standard of the works you will see is going to vary wildly so the only advice we can offer here is choose wisely. Just so we can be fair were not going to recommend any particular evening over any other. With 117 different works on show there is plenty to choose from and there are special ticket offers available from the theatre to keep the potentially astronomical cost down a little.
The Place's website offers minimal details about each show and there is no video to speak of, at least not that we could find. They do have a reminder service though which will, presumably, send you an email to let you know that you've missed the show you were planning on seeing.
A lot of the companies taking part in Resolution will disappear forever after the festival is over, through lack of support more than anything else, so catch them while you can. Drop us a line if you see anything good.
Resolution 08 rund from January 3rd to February 28th in London.
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Three Named, Two Confirmed
Friday, 21 December, 2007
Article19 has confirmed that Chisenhale Dance Space in London and Anjali Dance Company based in Oxfordshire will lose their Arts Council England (ACE) funding next year if their respective appeals against the decision are unsuccessful.
Chisenhale Dance Space have provided dance classes, workshops, residencies and other activities and support services in London for the past 25 years, according to their website. They declined further comment until the appeals process is complete.
Anjali Dance Company was formed in 1993. All of the company's dancers have learning disabilities, the overriding principal of the company being that "...disability is no barrier to creativity." The company also undertakes education and outreach work and they have toured nationally. Although the company did confirm the decision made by ACE their General Manager could not immediately be reached for comment.
Our source also told us that Robert Hylton Urban Classicism, based in London, will have their funding cut. The company is currently on holiday until January 7th so we cannot confirm this but a message on the company's website does say that an up and coming audition and tour has been postponed "due to recent Arts Council England funding decisions."
ACE have told Article19 that 12 dance related companies will lose their funding, pending an appeal, and 8 will be added to their RFO Portfolio. ACE have declined to release any further details on the funding decisions.
[ Chisenhale Dance Space ]
[ Anjali Dance Company ]
[ Robert Hylton Urban Classicism ]
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Top Secret No More!
Thursday, 29 November, 2007
DanceXchange have revealed more details about their super secret dance festival taking place next year in Birmingham. Sadly it's not called 'Project Icarus' or 'The Prometheus Event', thereby losing some of its James Bond like cachet!
Instead they have settled for the more user friendly 'International Dance Festival Birmingham' (IDFB) and this will all take place from April 28th to May 24th in 2008.
Coming along for the ride will be Cloud Gate Dance Theatre from Taiwan, Akram Khan Company along with some dancers from China, Cas Public from Quebec, Robyn Orlin from South Africa, Havana Rakatan from Cuba and Rosie Kay from, erm ..................... Scotland!
BareBones will also be making an appearance with a new set of dancers and three new works from Garry Stewart, of Australian Dance Theatre fame, Sara Mitchelson and Rui Horta. The Kirov Ballet (come again? Ed!) will round off the big name companies appearing at the festival.
Apart from the usual festival stuff, involving live shows in theaters where you can all have a sit down in the warm and watch a nice show, there will be a lot more going on outside. Hofesh Schechter and 2Faced Dance (whose ridiculous name capitilsation will not be adhered to in TheLab™) will be coming together to produce an outdoor performance event alongside an enormous youth performance in Birmingham's Town Hall venue.
If all that is not enough there will be opportunities for people to take part in various classes and events throughout the month, a BBoy competition and the whole festival will be sent on its way with a party in Birmingham's 'Mailbox', whimsically titled 'Salsa at Sunset'!
A full schedule of events, companies and venues will be finalised very soon and we will bring you more information as soon as it comes in. At the moment, along with everything else going on in dance, 2008 is shaping up to be rather hectic on the performance front.
IDFB kicks off on April 28th, 2008 and runs through May 24th, an Aston Martin and tuxedo will not be required!
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Place Prize 08, No, Really!
Tuesday, 27 November, 2007
2008 is shaping up to be the year of the big event. British Dance Edition 2008, Big Mission 2008, The Olympics, Euro 2008 (that's a football thing) and some top secret dance festival in Birmingham hosted by DanceXchange.
Sneaking in through the back door trying to make itself look important is, wait for it, The Place Prize 2008, the most ridiculously contrived dance event in the history of......... well everything!
The bi-annual bun fight gets under way in April next year and keeps on trucking until the end of the year but the call for entries starts right now, right here! Well not right here obviously because if you send your video entries to us for evaluation we'll just point at them and laugh.
What you actually need to do is send your entry form and a three minute video to the ever so serious folks at The Place in London. Your video must be in a "digital format" (ie: MiniDV) or they will throw it in the bin along with their ethics and common sense.
This raises some interesting questions. What if you shoot your video on DigiBeta, DVCProHD, AVCHD, HDCAM, DVCPro, HDV, MPeg2, XDCam, SxS, P2 or, heaven forbid, your cell phone? They are all digital formats as are DVD, Blueray and HDDVD. Would these formats be rejected? After all, they are digital and many of them are higher quality than MiniDV!
The "regulations" also state that the video should be in "Short Play" mode and not "Long Play" when, in fact, there is no difference (the tape just goes through the mechanism slower). They also say that the camera must not be in "DVCAM" mode which is a format found only on Sony cameras. Looks like somebody has been spending too much time in the Video Place reading their technical manuals.
But we digress.
Whatever you do don't send more than 3 minutes of footage because they will not watch it and you'll be up s**t creek in a cardboard canoe sans paddle.
When and if you reach the end of this choreographic, digital media quagmire the eventual winner will be rewarded with £25,000, immortality and a small boat! Except we're lying about the small boat and the immortality. The eventual winner should take note of this line from the regulations because it is all to telling;
Commissioned Choreographers agree to undertake promotional activity for The Place Prize throughout 2008 and for one year afterwards. Footage for news and promotional purposes may be filmed and broadcast without payment to or permission from the artists involved.
Who is this competition about again?
If you have more time than common sense then click on over to The Place website and let the entering begin.
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BDE Participants Announced
Friday, 23 November, 2007
Merseyside Dance Initiative has announced the companies that will be taking part in British Dance Edition 2008 (BDE) in Liverpool. The festival will feature 36 companies, some new some old, from across the UK in the festival aimed at promoting British Dance.
The companies participating are as follows (take a deep breath):
balletLORENT; Bare Bones; Bonachela Dance Company; Candoco Dance Company; Ch4pter; Colin Poole; Echo Echo Dance Theatre; Henri Oguike Dance Company; Hofesh Shechter; Impact Dance; Jasmin Vardimon Company; Jean Abreu Dance Company; Jonathan Lunn Dance Company; Liz Agiss; Liz Lea Dance; Lost Dog; Marc Rees; Mark Bruce Company; Mark Edward & Company; Movement Angol; New Art Club; Probe; Protein Dance; Qasim Riza Shaheen; Retina Dance Company; Richard Alston Dance Company; Ricochet Dance Productions; Russell Maliphant Dance Company; Scottish Dance Theatre; Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company; Stammer; Tabula Rasa Dance Company; Tanja Raman; Tilted Productions; Two Dancers; Vincent Dance Theatre and Wired Aerial Theatre.
(and exhale!)
Unlike other festivals BDE is targeted primarily at promoters so tickets for some shows will be hard to come by. There are two evenings of triple bills at Livepool's large Empire Theatre featuring Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, Hofesh Shechter, Richard Alston Dance Company, Russell Maliphant Dance Company, Scottish Dance Theatre and Henri Oguike Dance Company on January 31st and February 2nd. The size of the venue should make securing tickets a lot easier.
You can read comprehensive details about the festival on their website, tickets for some events can be booked online.
British Dance Edition 2008 runs from January 30th until February 2nd in Liverpool.
[ British Dance Edition Website ]
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