Tag: Dance

Birthday Honours For Dance

Dance in the MainstreamWith dance continuing to raise its profile within Westminster, it was a delight to see a huge ten dance names recognised for their outstanding work in dance across a wide variety of contexts in Britain in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

Announced on 15 June 2013, some of those awarded an honour in the recognition of dance included the below:

Esteemed dance writer Jeanette Siddall was awarded a CBE for services to dance, recognising her outstanding contribution to the industry beyond her job. Also awarded a CBE was Gailene Stock, Director of the Royal Ballet School, for services to dance.

OBEs were awarded to Lloyd Newson, Founder and Director of physical theatre company DV8, for services to contemporary dance, and also to Cindy Sughrue, Chief Executive of Scottish Ballet for services to dance. Richard Glasstone, choreographer, teacher and author was awarded an MBE for services to classical ballet.

Howard Panter, the co-founder of the Ambassador Theatre Group and Chair of Rambert Dance Company was made a knight in the Honours list for his services to theatre. Panter has been a driving force in the fundraising and building of Rambert Dance Company’s new building on the Southbank which is due to open later this year in September as a very exciting new prospect for dance.

In particular, Dance UK has been working to respond to industry concerns about the numbers of dance professionals compared to sport, theatre and music recognised in the Queen’s and New Year’s Honours lists. As a result, Dance UK has established a voluntary Honours Advisory Committee for the industry, including dance professionals from a cross-section of dance genres. The group meets twice a year and is committed to nominating and championing dance professionals who deserve to be honoured for their services to dance.

The BBC Performing Arts Fund

BBC Performaing Arts Fund

The BBC Performing Arts Fund has recently awarded £450,000 in grants to the theatrical sector for 2013. The first venture in this direction took place on Friday 7 June, which was the first live show of The Voice UK. This BBC One programme raises income for the BBC Performing Arts Fund through phone votes (a minimum of 10p per call), and whilst the genuine talent of the programme which graces the nation’s television screens could be questioned, it is clear that the contributions of funds from programmes of this type are extremely beneficial for the performing arts.

Since 2003, the revenue generated through phone voting programmes has resulted in over £4million of grants being awarded to emerging individuals and community groups working and performing in areas across the dance, music and theatre sectors. The commercial side of the venture considerably raises the profile of the sometimes understated performing arts sector, giving a larger voice to the belters of the industry, singing them loud and proud.

As a result of this, 2013 has seen the funding spotlight placed solidly on theatre. A total of £450,000 in grants is currently available for use in performing arts in each niche that will further invest in creative talent across the UK, from community centres, to after school clubs, to dance and drama schools, to the West End stage. Both of the Fund’s schemes are now currently open for applications, namely the Theatre Fellowship and Community Theatre.

Theatre Fellowships aims to support individuals through the early stages of their theatre careers, helping them to establish themselves in the professional world through bespoke placements within existing theatre organisations. The Community Theatre scheme aims to support the development of not for profit community theatre groups, allowing them to carry out training, attract new audiences, encourage new members and raise their profile in their communities.

Step LIVE! 2013

Step Into Dance 2013Step into Dance, a partnership between the Jack Petchey Foundation and the Royal Academy of Dance, will be hosting Step LIVE! 2013 on Sunday 14 July, marking the return of the unmissable annual flagship event of Step’s school community dance programme.

Step LIVE! 2013 will transform the foyer of Sadler’s Wells into a hive of activity from 4.30pm, with free events with something for everybody to enjoy including dance battles, pop up dances, videos and films. Whether you are a budding breaker or a popping pro, the afternoon looks set to be bursting with energy and phenomenal dancing. The show on the main stage will follow at 6.30pm, with over 400 talented young dancers from schools in 32 London Boroughs and Essex coming together to celebrate their love of dance in this diverse and inclusive evening.

Step into Dance is the biggest ongoing inclusive dance initiative in London and Essex, with 200 participating State Secondary Schools. With Step LIVE! as Step’s annual flagship celebration of youth dance just one of the many events and workshops Step initiates, it is a celebration of all the Step into Dance team do for young dancers across the capital,

Tickets: £8 (some with restricted view) £10, or £15 with 20% discount for groups (8 or more) in the stalls, making the event perfect for schools who are interested in taking part in the Step into Dance scheme.

School groups of 5+ can book tickets in the second circle for £8 per person. For this offer, please book over the phone or in person (not online). For school groups of over 10 students you will receive one free ticket for the accompanying staff member.

Rambert’s 87th Birthday

Rambert Dance Company Logo

Rambert Dance Company turned 87 years old on 15 June 2013 as Britain’s oldest dance company. There has been much discussion amongst balletomanes recently about the ethnicity of dancers in British ballet and dance companies and the lack of British dancers, so it is ironic that Rambert’s founder, Marie Rambert, was Polish and originally studied Eurythmics under Emile Jacques-Dalcroze.

Established in 1926, Rambert – as it is now to be known following recent rebranding of the Richard Alston named Rambert Dance Company – is the flagship modern dance company of Britain, employing more dancers and artists than any other dance company in the UK. Rambert appeals widely to audiences all over the world, often dancing the works of iconic choreographers both past and present, such as Wayne McGregor, Siobhan Davies and American modern dance pioneer Merce Cunningham. This gives a certain stature to Rambert’s work as it continues to provide a vast repertoire of works around the world.

Rambert’s first choreographic work in 1926 is said to mark the birth of British ballet under the title A Tragedy of Fashion by Frederick Ashton, who was then one of Rambert’s students. In 1935 Rambert was renamed Ballet Rambert (from the Ballet Club as it was originally known), and this name remained until 1987. Rambert became a touring ballet company for up to 35 weeks a year during the Second World War and frequently performed at Sadler’s Wells. Ballet Rambert then went on to perform several classic including Giselle, Coppelia and the first major British productions of La Sylphide and Don Quixote, rather than creating new works.

In 1952 Rambert travelled to America to see the new developments in dance and study with some of the major choreographers of the time, such as Martha Graham. Following this the company returned to its original ethos and transformed from a medium-scale classical touring company, to smaller ensemble, to contemporary dance company in later years.

Akram Khan Company To Hit Australia!

Akram Khan

This summer will see a continuation of celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the notorious The Rite of Spring by the Akram Khan Dance Company taking Khan’s iTMOi (in the mind of Igor [Stravinksy, the composer]) to Australia and presenting it at the Sydney Opera House in August and September 2013. This production will visit the city direct form its world premiere at the Maison de la Culture in Grenoble and a season at Sadlers Wells, London. This is incredibly exciting news for contemporary dance fans in the southern hemisphere!

iTMOi was choreographed by Khan to mark the 100th year since the provocative premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in Paris, in which it evoked rioting and disorder. As a result, iTMOi aims to capture the chaotic energy of the original work, taking its vibrant spirit as the starting point for the new work and creating something organic.

Khan is renowned for his artistic collaborations and for this production he has worked with composers Nitin Sawhney, Ben Frost and Jocelyn Pook to develop a brand new score, inspired by Stravinsky’s work. Khan stated that he was ultimately interested in the dynamics of how Stravinsky transformed the classical world of music by evoking emotions through patterns, rather than through musical expression, which audiences could argue is none existent in the groundbreaking work. The patterns of the music are rooted in the concept of a woman, the ‘chosen one’ dancing herself to death as sacrifice, which forms the main part of Khan’s inspiration in reinvestigating the work. Khan also aimed to explore the human condition, not just the patterns, to remind audiences of the essences of the mind and imagination, which are wild and self-generating.

Images courtesy of Andy Miah at Flickr.

The Origins Of The Tarantella

Tarantella in Napoli by Enrico ForlenzaMany balletomanes may believe they know of the Tarantella through iconic American choreographer George Balanchine. However the dance, as a wild folk dance of Italy, was once believed to be a cure for tarantula bites, characterised by a fast, upbeat tempo and accompanied by tambourines.

Balanchine’s Tarantella showcases the nimble quickness of the dance and is a virtuosic display in the profusion of steps and quick changes of direction. The origins of the Tarantella are not dissimilar to the display by Balanchine, with the belief in the 16th and 17th centuries that the victims of tarantula bites must perform a frenzied dance to swear the poison out to prevent death and the hysterical condition known as tarantism using very rhythmic music. Today, the Tarantella is simply a dance in which the dancer and the musician constantly try to upstage each other by dancing or playing longer or faster than the other in order to tire the other out.

The first Tarantella dance originated in the Apulia region and spread out across cultures. As a result, the Neapolitan tarantella is a courtship dance performed by couples and featuring cheerful and increasingly faster music, and it is thought that its origins lie in the 15th century fusion between the Spanish Fandango and the Moresque’ballo di sfessartia, with the Tarantella becoming a solo dance.

Notable tarantellas include those in classical music such as that by Benjamin Britten, Sergei Prokofiev, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Frederic Chopin, Claude Debussy, Franz Liszt, Camille Saint-Saens and Igor Stravinsky, in literature: a performance of the dance was central to Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, and in film: The Godfather I and II, the musical version of Peter Pan danced by Captain Hook and his band of pirates, referenced in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and the Fairy Godmother’s song from Disney’s Cinderella is also a tarantella.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Do You Have To Shock To Survive?

The Book Of Mormon

With the incredible success The Book of Mormon has celebrated since it opened in March of this year, it begs the question as to whether productions of this kind, and dance too, must continually push accepted boundaries in order to draw in audiences, or similarly keep them interested.

The Book of Mormon is incredibly unsubtle but nonetheless extremely entertaining in its shallow depiction of two missionaries journeying to Uganda, frequenting the use of  expletives  and being entirely ruthless in their approach. Whilst this is a musical theatre production, light-hearted and energetic, it suggests that even the broad commerciality of musical theatre may be veering towards the shock factor and the innovatively new in order to draw in younger (and different) audiences who may then also catch the bug of showbiz.

This is mirrored, directly or indirectly, in the postmodern era of contemporary dance for example, instigated by the Judson Church Group in 1960s USA. The group worked to push the boundaries of contemporary and modern dance to break free from the ‘constraints’ of the American modern dance pioneers, namely Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Merce Cunningham, and so on, whose techniques shaped perceptions of dance. This resulted in the likes of Trisha Brown with her site-specific installations, Yvonne Rainer and Paul Taylor, who went from the ‘naughty boy’ of the Martha Graham Dance Company to a post-modern choreographer in his own right, rebelling against the technique and expression of previous years. However, even those such as Graham, Humphrey and Isadora Duncan, as the primary protagonist, were rebelling in one sense or another, with Duncan being the most apparent of the three by dancing barefoot and without the restricting corsets of the era in which she resided.

It is interesting therefore to note that today’s dance and musical theatre scene may not be a rebellion of the previous, but more an evolution of the current, with choreographers and performers attempting new things in order to drive the industry and keep the art-form alive.

Life After Training

DancersAfter three institutionalised years at performing arts college, the big bad world on the other side of the studio door can seem a little daunting. Many students will graduate from college alongside their peers, only to be greeted with the graduates from all the other acting, musical theatre and dance colleges all over the world, all battling for the same jobs. This is even without considering graduates from years before the current year, in addition to the professional dancers already established within the industry. When auditions are looming, it could seem that a fresh-faced graduate is ultimately a minuscule fish in a huge high-kicking sea.

This is not to say that new graduates are unable to obtain jobs in theatres and on projects, as this decision lies purely with the casting director. Your pirouettes may have been the best of your third year, but if your hair colour and height are not what fits the production bill, the job may go elsewhere.

Alternatively, many graduates lean towards the teaching disciplines, eager to apply their three years of training and experience to a different venture and help young dancers to prepare for their future dancing years. Many institutes of higher education and examination boards such as the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, the Royal Academy of Dance, the International Dance Teachers’ Association and the British Ballet Organisation are able to provide professional dancers with the qualifications they need to take up teaching jobs and help pass on their knowledge of performing arts. It is arguable that the satisfaction gleaned from teaching and aiding young students is equal to that of performing on stage, the buzz of applying yourself to the job immeasurable.

There are ultimately many different avenues of work for performing arts graduates, and all waiting for a fresh influx of young professionals later this year!

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Big Dance Pledge

Big Dance 2013Artistic Director of English National Ballet Tamara Rojo has begun leading the Big Dance Pledge, an initiative to be performed by thousands of people all over the world on the weekend of 17-19 May. She was joined by her dancers from ENB and young dancers from Chingford Foundation School, London, to raise awareness of this fantastic project which they hope will go global.

Organised by Big Dance, the world’s largest biennial festival of dance and with the support of the British Council, the Big Dance Pledge has been taught, learnt and will be performed by over 32,000 people this weekend in hundreds of places around the world including India, Lebanon and Brazil. The Pledge has been specially choreographed by English National Ballet’s Creative Learning department (specifically by artists Laura Harvey (Creative Associate) and Jenna Lee (Soloist) and is a 3-minute dance routine that anyone can do – regardless of age or experience.

ENB hopes to inspire as many people as possible to take part and embrace the art of dance as a chance to learn something new and engage in a community experience after the fantastic success of Big Dance 2012. Last year the cause reached millions of people all over the country through the Big Dance Festival, which will take place again in 2014. The Pledge therefore aims to continue this success and remind everyone of the power of Big Dance to enfold communities in performing arts.

The Big Dance Pledge ultimately strives to build on the legacy left by last year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in involving all in a worthy and motivating cause, inspiring and encouraging people to make dance a bigger and more enriching part of their lives. With Tamara as one at the helm, who is an International Ambassador for Big Dance, it seems that Big Dance will continue as the ultimate dance experience in bringing dance to as many as possible in unexpected ways.

The Pledge is available to learn now and will be performed during the Pledge Performance Weekend (17-19 May). Watch the video below for more information.

Choros – A Pas De Trente Deux!

Choros

Today we are highlighting an incredibly hypnotic short film called Choros. Filmed in 2011 by Michael Langan & Terah Maher, Choros is a dizzying combination of music, dance and cinema where a single dancer (Maher) is “layered” over herself 32 times… in effect, a “pas de trente-deux”! Set to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, the result is surreal, highly inventive and just plain beautiful to watch.

The filming of Choros references a historical technique called chronophotography, whcih used multiple photographs to enable the scientific study of a subject’s movement. However, Langan and Maher have advanced the technique in Choros through digital innovation, which has lead to multiple international awards since its launch.

Watching the full work requires freeing up some time as it lasts for 13 minutes, but we urge everyone to watch this truly stunning film… it is inspirational!