East London Dance projects for 2018

East London Dance and Shoreditch Town Hall are set to co-produce Identity, a celebration of east London’s fashion and dance culture. An Open Call for east London’s brightest young dance talents invites them to take part in East Wall additionally, as two cornerstone productions in 2018.

East Wall is a project that will fill the moat of the Tower of London with young east Londoners; alongside Identity, a production that will celebrate east London’s creative style. East London Dance will therefore be able to introduce wider audiences to the breadth of talent that east London has to offer. East Wall will be a major new dance and live music performance directed by Hofesh Shechter in summer 2018.

The Open Call hopes to attract east London-based school, college, university, community and youth dance groups to perform in East Wall, in partnership with Historic Royal Palaces and LIFT. The organisations are looking for up to 160 young east London-based community dancers aged 13-25 to participate in this large-scale spectacle of dance and live music, directed by the world-renowned choreographer Shechter. This will be in collaboration with four newly-announced choreographers, Becky Namgauds, Duwane Taylor, James Finnemore and Joseph Toonga.

The project of Identity collides fashion and dance to spotlight the unparalleled creativity bursting from east London’s diverse communities, a celebration at Shoreditch Town Hall in Spring 2018. Audiences will be plunged into an immersive world of alternative and underground style brought to life in a catwalk-style arena set in the majestic Victorian Assembly Hall of Shoreditch Town Hall.

A gig-like dance experience, Identity will introduce urgent new voices, including hip hop dance artist Emma Houston (Breakin’ Convention), who are shaping our future and proving that fashion and dance, at their most powerful, can be the ultimate expressions of who we are.