Barbican Theatre (Plymouth) has announces initial plans for its four year diverse dance programme which will collectively be known as FUSE: DIVERSE DANCE. FUSE is a brand new dance project funded by Arts Council England, aiming to create a new way of making dance by bringing together diverse communities, local dancers and guest choreographers as equal partners, to have fun, share dance styles and create new performances.
Barbican Theatre has a strong history of dance development over the last 30 years, and FUSE is the exciting next step for 2018. The new project will change how the south western theatre will deliver dance, moving away from one-off projects towards supporting a process of training and empowerment for diverse dance artists in Plymouth over the four year period. It will also enable the theatre to support the resilience and capacity of diverse dance artists in the city, to lead dance practice to a new level and therefore contributing a distinctive element to major city festivals such as Illuminate and Mayflower 400.
In 2019 there will be a first choreographic production using local professional dance artists working with a number of different dance genres, brought together in a narrative structure. This will be evaluated and the learning will shape an expanded dance production celebrating dance in the city of Plymouth as part of its 2020 celebrations. There will be a number of opportunities to work with Barbican Theatre on FUSE and its first appointment will be for a FUSE Lead Choreographer / Dance Practitioner.
The project will indeed fuse dance styles, artists and communities but also to ‘light a fuse’ – empowering people to explore their own movement, and with that their health and wellbeing. It is also hoped that FUSE will also reveal new and exciting dance performances audiences want to watch.