Created in Birmingham

Just had word of a hip hop and b-boy dance double bill  at mac on Friday. It’s part of BASS Festival and features UK hip hop dance champions Smash Bro’z and Miami’s Rudi Goblen. Here’s some blurb about the performers and performances:

Smash Bro’z new dance piece Fresh Genes depicts the journey and discovery of a young scientist who is on a mission to find a cure for the misrepresentation of Hip Hop in the UK. The scientists then discover a new gene – the ‘Hip Hop’ gene. West Midlands based Hip Hop dance collective Smash Bro’z recently won first prize in the 2010 UK Hip Hop Dance Championships.

Insanity Isn’t, written & Performed by US based Rudi Goblen tells the story of Acey who, whilst trying to sleep through the American dream instead wakes to an American nightmare. He finds himself plagued by financial burdens, media propaganda, religious beliefs, keeping up with the Jones’, and apocalyptic prophecies. B-Boy movements, rhyme, beat box and live music weave together his journey back to insane sanity.

Tickets are £10 (£7 concessions) and are available from the mac website here or by calling 0121 446 3232.

Read down – there’s a competition for free tickets later on in this post.

I’m conscious that I’ve not mentioned International Dance Festival Birmingham so much on here over the past month. Partly that’s because I’ve been busy working on it and going to just about every event that I could.

There’s only a couple of days left but still a chance to catch some good stuff. Tonight, there’s:

• Cruel by Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker (Birmingham Hippodrome)
• Self Unfinished by Xavier Le Roy (Ikon Eastside)
• Kathak Duet by Abhimanyu & Vidha Lal (The Patrick Centre)

And tomorrow (the last day) there’s:

• A second chance to catch Cruel (Birmingham Hippodrome)
• Put Your Foot Down (St Martin’s Square, Bullring)

Put Your Foot Down is a big, free event that’ll run from midday to 6pm. Worth checking out, because the festival has been doing big, free public events very well (for instance, Utopia was great).

I saw Self Unfinished at Ikon Eastside last night and it’s probably the most ‘out there’ event in the entire programme – as David Massingham (festival co-director) said afterwards, it’s probably the furthest you can get from Strictly Come Dancing.

I’m off to Cruel tonight though – athletic Brazilian dancers, knives, spinning mirrors and a ruddy great big globe-shaped chandelier. That’s entertainment. Speaking of which…

Competition

We’ve been given a pair of tickets for the spectacular-looking Cruel tonight. If you want your name to go into a draw for them then email ‘CRUEL’ to createdinbirmingham@gmail.com. We’ll do the draw at about 2pm and let the winner know the good news.

5 SOLDIERS: The Body is the Frontline is the new piece by Rosie Kay Dance Company that’s getting it’s first ever full showing tonight as part of IDFB 2010. Tickets for it sold out a while ago, but there might still be some for tomorrow and the dates at Warwick Arts Centre.

Rosie was interviewed on R4′s Today programme this morning.

I’ve written a piece elsewhere about the impressive amount of development work that’s gone into the performance – two weeks training with the 4th Battalion of The Rifles, time spent at Headley Court, bringing an injured soldier into the studio and so on – and there’s an interview with Rosie here:

Rosie Kay – 5 Soldiers from Mr Nat Higginbottom on Vimeo.

At 6.30pm today I’m running a liveblog for International Dance Festival Birmingham at a debate that will look at the future of public investment in the arts. The Hippodrome are hosting and these are the panelists:

• Ed Vaizey (Conservative)
• Siôn Simon (Labour)
• Lord Clement-Jones (Lib Dem)
• Marc Reeves (TheBusinessDesk.com)

Journalist, broadcaster and author, Rosie Millard will chair the debate.

The politicians on the panel are, or have until recently been, party spokespeople for arts and culture. Marc Reeves has recently advised DCMS on new models of independent news provision. They’re all busy people at the moment so pinning them down can’t have been easy.

What would you want to see them asked? How far spending cuts are going to go? Whether encouraging philanthropy is going to help anyone other than large venues? What the heck they were thinking with the Digital Economy Act?

You can watch follow the debate on CiB below and chip in with any thoughts or comments as we go along. The liveblog has a page of its own here too.

International Dance Festival Birmingham kicks off on 19 April and runs through to 15 May.

At this point I should chuck in a disclaimer that I’ve been working with the festival’s organisers for a year or so on how they approach things online. However, that does mean that I’ve got a bit of a clue about what the line-up includes. Which is nice, because there are any number of ways of slicing and dicing a festival’s programme – this is my attempt to group it up a bit.

There’s more going on than I’ll mention here so see the IDFB website’s What’s On and Taking Part pages for the whole caboodle.

Local stuff

• Rosie Kay Dance Company – 5 SOLDIERS The Body is the Frontline - Rosie’s based in Birmingham and this is a new commission which will explore the physical toll taken by war
• Colin Dunne – Out of Time – Colin was born in Birmingham, was nine times world Irish step dance champion and also principal dancer in Riverdance. This is his first full-length solo work
• DX Productions & Two’s Company – Funny Bones – something for the kids: a brand new in-the-round double bill of contemporary dance for over 5′s.

Big ticket items

• Akram Khan Company – Gnosis. See pic above.
• Mark Morris Dance Group – L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. This has had more 5 star reviews than I’ve had hot dinners.
• Ballet Nacional de Cuba – Magia de la Danza and Giselle.
• Outspoken Weekend. Something you won’t see anywhere else – a season dedicated to new performances from Arab artists, 8 shows in all (see the What’s On page for the lot)

Something a bit different

• Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui/Sadler’s Wells London – Sutra. 17 Shaolin monks. A set designed by Antony Gormley. Sharp suits. Nuff said.
• C!RCA – Circa. Described as ‘a thoroughly new circus’. This was a big hit at last the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
• Chris Haring – Running Sushi. I don’t know much about this other than that it’ll be at Ikon Eastside and the order of the 12 performances will be chosen by audience members who picking sushi off a plate

Free stuff

For IDFB 2008, Victoria Square was taken over by two stages, gantries, firecracker-stuffed cars and three dance companies. It was so good I went twice. This year we’re told that:

contemporary dancers will form a brand new dance company collective alongside Russian, Spanish, Indian and African folk dance groups, all moving to the turbo-folk Gypsy and Balkan beats of Birmingham’s very own band The Destroyers

The event’s called UTOPIA and will be performed a few times over the Bank Holiday weekend of 1-3 May. In the words of the choreographer:

There’ll be bits of furniture all over the place and basically it’ll look like 40 people, plus the band, have attacked the square

Which sounds pretty good. As does Waves, which is right up my street. Wander past the Hippodrome between 8-11pm from 22 April to 5 May to see/play with that.

Put Your Foot Down is the final showpiece on 15 May – an afternoon of free performances and dance demos, with a mass synchronised hip hop/street dance routine lead by Salah, a hugely popular hip hop artist from France, in St Martin’s Square, Bullring.

Taking part

There’s also a whole bunch of workshops and classes you can get involved in.

During my first stint on Created in Birmingham I had a nagging feeling that there was loads of good dance stuff going on but it was all happening under my radar. I’m pretty much on top of it these days, partly for the reasons given in the disclaimer at the bottom of this post but mainly because there’s so much dance stuff happening around the city this year.

Anyway, from tomorrow until Sunday, British Dance Edition – a biennial showcase of the British dance scene – is in Birmingham. It’s a big deal, with loads of venues hosting performances, events, presentations and debates. It’s a national showcase, not a local one, but there’s a fair bit of local interest:

• Rosie Kay previewing her new piece, 5 SOLDIERS – The Body Is The Frontline
• DanceXchange showing some of their work on The 5 Man Show
• Listen by Ace Dance & Music
• Funny Bones, from dX and Two’s Company Management
• Receptions hosted by International Dance Festival Birmingham, Birmingham Royal Ballet and People Dancing.
• Walking tours of the city for delegates (Digbeth and the Jewellery Quarter)

There’s probably more too. Most of it’s for paying delegates only but there are some good public events too.

Disclaimer – I’m working on/at British Dance Edition (incl one of the debates) and International Dance Festival Birmingham. WestMidlandsDance.com is one of my websites too.

Kate Chapman & Charlotte Goodwin - Amplifying the Map

I have to admit to be SUPER excited about the impending re-opening of the mac.  So ANY news, or any work linked to the opening, in turn excites me too.  In addition, my personal interests are deeply rooted in events which involve an element of participation – and with that in mind, I’m particularly excited to touch upon ‘Site and Sounds’.

“Site and Sounds offers a taste of the activities planned for mac’s re-opening in 2010 including workshops, walks and the premiere of a specially composed anthem for mac. mac’s Associate Artists Stan’s Cafe and Motionhouse Dance Theatre will also be presenting work as part of the summer programme including an adventure in the dark and some in-your-face dancing.”

There’s a substantial programme of events leading up to the re-opening – details of which can be found on the macartists website, as well as information on how to book for workshop places.  I was excited to see a screen-printing workshop advertised, then realised I am sadly 16 years too old to take part. Sniffle.  If you DO fit into that age category however, I think it’ll be a lot of fun!

I’m also curious about the recent theme of ‘mapping’ which keeps cropping up in projects and artist’s works of late.  This time, artists Kate Chapman and Charlotte Goodwin are exploring the mapping theme by inviting people who live, work or play close to mac to re-discover familiar places and explore places they have never visited before, sharing their thoughts and observations to create an audio map of the changing landscape.  All of these recordings will feed into an audio map – a web of downloadable audio tracks focusing on different locations in a mile radius of Cannon Hill Park.  I’m wondering if any CiB readers have experienced any other map-themed artworks/projects of late – if so, send me an email or leave a comment.

I will also be interested to see ‘Underground’,  performed by four dancers from Motionhouse Dance Theatre.

“Set within a rocking tubular structure, using physical dance, poignant imagery and surprising aerial encounters, ‘Underground’, explores the reality of train travel.”

Considering the title of the performance, I imagine it would originally by inspired by the experience of underground travel as opposed to regular trains.  How this will translate both to regular train travel as well as the open space of Cannon Hill Park will remain a mystery until the performance itself, which is happening Saturday 18th July at Cannon Hill Park at 11.30am, 1pm and 3pm.

Motionhouse Dance Theatre - Underground

Hi everyone, it’s me again. You may or may not know (or care – it’s ok, I can take it) that I’m now running the West Midlands Dance website. This is the first in a series of monthly round-ups I’ll be contributing here. So…

Starting with a biggie – the People Dancing programme has been launched. This is a programme to encourage mass public participation in dance and dance-related events and is the main focus of the Cultural Olympiad for the West Mids. Info, documents and potential partners are over on the West Midlands Dance website.

It’s been announced that the British Dance Edition 2010 will be held in Birmingham on 3-6 February 2010.

There’s been plenty from Birmingham Royal Ballet who have announced their season for 2009/2010. They’ve been touring recently, with some of the dancers contributing to a blog. Also, the Guardian wrote a rather flattering guide to the company as part of their step-by-step series.

The latest Youth Dance England newsletter is out.

Breakin Convention is off on tour with several local breakdancing crews joining international acts at the Hippodrome on 12 & 13 May.

Last, and anything but least, a video from the last Project X Presents event, Digital Dystopia (link to video):

Read the fairly mind-boggling explanation and make sure the next Project X event is in your diary – it’s in Moseley on 9 May – Xhibition.

A video here of ACE Youth performing ‘Ubhuntu Bam’ at DanceXchange‘s Raw Energy 08 from earlier in the year:

Meanwhile, a visual from ACE’s production ‘Skin’ has been used for the cover of the Arts Council’s Annual Review 2008:

ACE dance & music are currently touring around with their last ever performances of the much-acclaimed Skin and will be at the Solihull Arts Complex on Tues 14 October.

The show is split into two halves and it says here the artistic director has worked with:

Akiko Kitamura from the Leni-Basso Dance Company of Japan and Vincent Mantsoe from Soweto South Africa to create a show which explores what lies beneath the skin, where our skin begins and ends, the spirit of unity and all the things that we all share

Here’s the trailer for the show:

As you’ll have guessed from the title, DanceXchange‘s Autumn schedule has been announced.

It kicks off on 24 September with Rosie Kay Dance Company’s ‘Double Points: K & Supernova‘ which were featured in the International Dance Festival Birmingham back in May.

The rest of the season features:

• 9 and 10 October, Jasmin Vardimon Company – Yesterday
• 21 and 22 October, 2FaCeD DaNcE Company – State of Matter
• 15 November, Jesús Fernández – Pura Emoción
• 4 December, Vincent Mantsoe – Ebhofolo

WhatsOnStage Midlands have some more info and the pic is of Hsiu-Hsien Tang in Supernova.

On Thurs 10 July the first screening of Finished With The War will take place as part of New Vibes at the Patrick Centre.  New Vibes is DanceXchange‘s annual showcase and Finished With The War is

a dance for camera piece that explores the relationship between the First World War and the current war in Iraq through research into the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Andrew Motion

It’s been produced/choreographed by Lucy Nicholls with direction and post-production by Liam d’Authreau and an original music composition by Marc Reck.

There’s more info on the eflyer and also on the Blendstate site and Lucy Nicholl’s own blog.

The International Dance Festival Birmingham started today and continues until Sunday 25 May at venues all over the city. Pete mentioned this back in January and pointed out how truly international the line-up is, with performers from Taiwan, Australia, South Africa, Cuba and Russia, as well as “rising star” Rosie Kay from Birmingham.

The full line-up for this week (and indeed the other weeks) can be seen on their events page.

Pulling out highlights would be a fool’s errand but for those looking to sample the impressive wares without parting with their hard-earned, there are a few free events to catch:

• Performances in shop windows around the city centre are taking place daily from midday all this week – head for Oasis, the Puma Store, Bathstore and Chamberlain Square. More details here.
• In Victoria Square on Friday night, 9pm and on Saturday at 4pm and 9pm you can see Watch This Space which I have very high hopes for indeed.

Lastly, the festival has a blog, although I see this hasn’t been updated in the past week. I’m hoping they use it to collect together all the photos, videos and reviews that will be spun out by visitors to the events, similar to the Collective Memories that Pete did here (and that I’ll be continuing to do).

Photo by Brian Slater.

The Flamenco Birmingham site now has details of the performances and workshops that are part of the first International Dance Festival Birmingham. Performances include The TG Collective on Saturday 3rd May and En Sus 13 on Tuesday 6th May, both at Town Hall.

The site also confirms that there will be another Emoción Flamenco Festival later this year, following the success of the first festival last November. The line up and artists for this festival will be announced over the coming weeks. The site has an RSS feed (yay) so it will be easy to keep up with the news, however (note to their webmaster) I was unable to link to specific pages of interest as the site uses URL masking.

Continuing our trip down memory lane, and potentially starting a new series (“Nostalgia Thursday”?) here’s a video from 1985 just posted on the Surely? blog by Mark Murphy who’s not afraid to show his age.

I used to spend my Sunday afternoons in the dance studios at Birmingham’s (soon to be refurbished) mac. Hip Hop had landed and breakdancing with it. [...] Originally shot for use in sequences in a film about International Youth Year (1985), I have treasured this now fairly gnarly gem, a glimpse into the urban history of this city I call home.

There’s another clip of early beatboxing in that post and Mark promises more to come.

Meanwhile, here’s an amusing graphic found on the Wikipedia page for beatboxing (where I was checking it was actually called that. I make no pretentions here, though I am surprisingly good at it…) so you can have a go at home.

Any other historical gems, feel free to send them my way!