April 2015 – Page 2 – Dance Direct Blog. News, Reviews & Advice About Dance

Cohan At 90

Robert Cohan At 90 The end of March saw the iconic Robert Cohan CBE, the father of British contemporary dance, celebrate his 90th birthday. As part of the celebrations, The Place announced the inaugural Cohan Lecture and re-launch of the Cohan Scholarship at the gala event on Thursday 26 March, and again on Friday 27 March when the event was open to the public too. The special gala event celebrated the immense contribution the legendary choreographer continues to make to dance in the UK, premiering a new work choreographed for 2015 on Liam Riddick of Richard Alston Dance Company.

The Place’s lecture series aims to cultivate lively debate around topical issues, named as the Cohan Lectures, in honour of the lively and enquiring mind of its founding Artistic Director and Patron, Robert Cohan. The first of these, entitled ‘What Matters?’, will see two of the great creative thinkers of our time, Sir Ken Robinson and Cohan, debate this question on Thursday 11 June at The Place. The lectures will run annually, inviting high profile speakers from a broad range of industries and backgrounds to continue this debate.

The re-launched Cohan Scholarship aims to support driven, talented students at London Contemporary Dance School who are in their final year, at the brink of their professional careers, to realise their potential. With donations made by supporters and guests in advance of the event, over £18,000 has already been raised, and the fund is now open for future donations. The scholarship is a way of making sure talents are excelled and potentials as independent artists are realised. The Cohan Scholarship will be awarded annually to students from London Contemporary Dance School’s BA Hons programme to support their training. The scholarship will support named students with exceptional potential in performance.

Amazon For Tickets!

Amazon Logo Amazon has upped its presence in the theatre marketplace recently, announcing it will now sell theatre tickets, becoming further involved with the artistic industry. As a giant global retailer, Amazon appears to see UK theatre – and specifically the West End – as an area into which it can expand.

Despite some cynicism, its entry into the arts could potentially be completely transformative for theatres. Amazon has previously been involved in the area of book publishing, for example, so this is not its first dabble into the arts. It is unlikely that the association of Amazon with the arts would be detrimental; ultimately Amazon will bring a whole new market for theatre tickets, as its customers are hugely global.

Amazon has a huge database to promote the arts and theatre tickets to, and this would also be significantly more diverse than the data of traditional ticket sellers. It is also a master in terms of ease of purchase with its one-click model – something that theatre ticketing websites have often struggled with, so it will be interesting to see these developments as they occur.

For tourists, theatre – particularly in London’s West End – is a huge magnetic pull. For many foreign visitors, it is one of the principal reasons they visit the capital city, in order to experience some of the artistic wealth the London theatre scene offers. It is therefore promising to see mayor Boris Johnson recognising the crucial role theatre plays in making people want to visit the city. Proximity to arts and culture are important to many people, so it is important to recognise this effect as a whole, not just for London.

Shechter Junior

Hofesh Junior The internationally renowned Hofesh Shechter Company recently announced the launch of its new company, Shechter Junior. This new venture, providing resource for aspiring professionals, is an apprentice programme for talented, young dancers between the age of 18 and 25 years old. Shechter Junior emerged from Hofesh Shechter and his Company’s commitment to nurturing young artists and creating opportunities for them to gain professional experience in a financially challenged arts scene.

In the demonstration of numerous young talented dancers to Shechter, the decision was made to provide a solid training for them during the period between beginning vocational dance training and graduating, much like Rambert’s youth company Quicksilver. The young dancers will be mentored from longstanding Hofesh Shechter Company members, have access to world-class venues and the stability of an apprentice salary, all self-funded by Hofesh Shechter Company through international touring and other partnerships: a fantastic opportunity. The first dancers involved in the scheme hail from a number of different countries, expanding the reach of the arts and providing for more and more people.

Shechter Junior will make its world debut at at Theatre des Abbesses in Paris this May, with a performance of deGeneration at Theatre des Abbesses (4-20 May), marking the start of a European tour. During their eight month apprenticeship the dancers will also work with Shechter on the creation of a new piece and perform alongside Hofesh Shechter Company in a special event, ‘Hofesh Shechter & Friends’ at HOME, Manchester’s new arts centre. Much hard work is required of the dancers, but the outstanding training and support they will receive as a result is second to none.

From May to November, the deGeneration international tour will take place, in addition to other engagements (venues to be announced).

Dance To The Edinburgh Festival!

The Edinburgh International Festival has announced its 2015 programme, including some exciting dance highlights. These include Sylvie Guillem, Israel Galván, Zürich Ballet and Les Ballets C de la B. This year’s festival runs from 7-31 August, and is an artistic delight for all culture vultures.

Les Ballet C de la B will dance Alain Platel and Frank Van Laecke’s En Avant, Marche!, a work which starts in the rehearsal room of an amateur brass band in Flanders. Ballet Am Rhein will dance Martin Schläpfer’s Seven, set to Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, and the iconic Guillem will perform her farewell show, Sylvie Guillem – Life in Progress. In addition, Galván will dance Lo Real, which explores the plight of the Roma and Sinti people in fascist Spain in the 1930s and 1940s.

The Festival provides a huge variety of artistic offerings to those who descend upon the city during the summer. In terms of dance 2015 is an important year, especially for those hoping to catch Guillem performing for the last time. Guillem will also be performing at Sadler’s Wells and the Birmingham Hippodrome as part of her farewell tour.

Also at the Edinburgh Festival, Zürich Ballet will perform a double bill of company director Christian Spuck’s Sonett which uses speech and music by Mozart and Philip Glass to explore Shakespeare’s sonnets, in addition to Wayne McGregor’s Kairos, set to Max Richter’s reimagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with designs by Idris Khan. TAO Dance Theatre will perform Weight x 3, created by its founder Tao Ye to music by Steve Reich. Richter will also perform his Vivaldi work in concert with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. There will also be a dance element in a new production of Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, conducted by Iván Fischer with choreography by Veronika Vámos.

Public Square Dancing In China

It has recently been reported that the millions of people who gather to dance in China’s public spaces will have to keep time with government regulations in future. In a country where censorship and strict regulations are in place as the norm, it seems this could spell the end for public square dancing in China, simply providing citizens with a small artistic outlet for themselves in a public space.

Public square dancing is a popular pastime in China, particularly among older women known as ‘damas’. However damas are considered a nuisance among some local residents, who complain about being disturbed by loud music: while this may echo various other forms of dancing all over the world, it seems this element of Chinese culture may slowly be reduced to nothing.

As a result of the complaints, Chinese authorities have begun to regulate and choreograph the dancing, which has been reported by the state-run China Daily website. Any groups wanting to dance in public will now be limited to 12 government-approved routines, which reads unnecessary censorship and control like nothing else. Despite the fact square-dancing represents a collective aspect of Chinese culture, it seems that the over-enthusiasm of participants has lead to the disputes over noise and venues.

The General Administration of Sport is overseeing the regulation along with the culture ministry, to ‘guide it with national standards and regulations.’ The choreography has been put together by an expert panel, the website says, and more than 600 instructors have been trained, in order to see the dancing performed in a socially responsible way – to a Western culture this discounts many of the artistic endeavours seen during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Some details are still to be confirmed, including when and where people are allowed to dance, and exactly how loud the music can be.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.