Created in Birmingham

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!

Punch Records are running a competition for desginers to create an advert for this year’s BASS Festival “highlighting this year’s theme of The Four Elements of Hip Hop – BBoying, DJing, graffiti, and MCing.”

There will be a cash prize of £500 and the winning design will receive huge exposure by appearing for six weeks on billboards in a central Birmingham location. The artist will also get one month’s exhibition space in a key Birmingham venue, as well as a launch event and PR support. Finally the lucky winner will get two full pages dedicated to their work, the project and their profile in the BASS festival brochure – of which there are 50,000 distributed nationally and internationally.

Full details are in The Punch Records newsletter and the deadline is Feb 28th.

It’s always a good thing to come across a contrary view when the prevailing opinion seems pretty unanimous, especially when that view is well thought out and comes from the grass roots.

Paul Burns reckons many of the funding decisions made by the Arts Council might be correct and explains at length. Go read the whole thing but in summary:

• It’s been managed really badly. This episode illustrates some serious problems with the way the Arts Council operates. “Many of these decisions may be right, but the process and its lack of transparency is obscuring this.”
• “Cutting funding per-se is not bad. No arts organisations should receive funding ad infinitum, and no-one working in the arts should expect the government to pay their wage.”
• “The Arts Council is responsible for arts development in England, which suggests change, renewal, growth and transition – not the maintenance of the status quo.”
• “Statements about “no confidence” in Arts Council England, or the organisation being “no longer fit for purpose” do not help the arts in any way. What do we replace it with?”

I could go on but I’ll just be reprinting the whole post.

Paul, trading as Wechtie, works in “contemporary dance, music and visual arts” and is currently with DanceXchange. His weblog mostly covers contemporary dance.

Note: when writing to me about this Paul said he’d not mentioned his blog before “as it’s rather niche”. This is the wrong attitude! I’ve been waiting for someone to start a dance-related blog all year! Niche is good!

Here’s a short video from the BASS Festival that took place in Birmingham in June.

More about the British Art and Street Sounds shindig on the Punch Records site.

[Update: The website has been updated so most of the links below are broken.]

The big press release of the day appears to be for the International Dance Festival Birmingham coming out of DanceXchange and the Hippodrome with events happening at the Rep, Town Hall, Ikon and the Mailbox from 28th April to 24th May.

Here’s the press release and programme highlights (PDFs).

Quote from the festival co-directors:

David Massingham, Artistic Director of DanceXchange: “In great cities all around the world, I see arts festivals creating passion and energy, adding spirit and excitement, galvanising local communities, celebrating identities. Birmingham’s new International Dance Festival is about bringing one of the most human and accessible artforms into our everyday lives.”

Stuart Griffiths, Chief Executive of Birmingham Hippodrome: “This truly will be a festival with an international reach. We’ve managed to secure the involvement of some of the world’s most prominent dance companies and the programme looks set to help establish Birmingham as a major cultural player within the UK, and across the world.”

When they say international they’re not kidding and it’s great to see a Birmingham festival that lives up to that tagline with dancers from Taiwan, Cuba, China, South Africa, Russia, India, Pakistan, Japan, Australia, USA, Portugal and more. But there’s also local talent involved. Quickly scanning through the PDFs I spotted the phrase “Birmingham-based rising star Rosie Kay” and did some digging. Here’s her pretty well stocked website which has plenty to dig through along with a link to her Flickr stream containing a mix of press shots and informal behind the scenes photos. Nice. Here’s one from her company’s production of The Wild Party:

Rosie appears to have had a pretty good 2007. This interview goes through some of the highlights and covers the Birmingham connection.

What bought you back to the UK – and Birmingham, where you’re based?
I’d almost given up dancing – I knew I wanted to be a choreographer, but I couldn’t be abroad, I needed my own language, and I’d have to start again. I saw the Dance Artist in Residence post at DanceXchange in Birmingham. I’d taught a huge amount but this kind of gave me my choreographic stripes. It was great experience working with a massive range of people – and it just got me back into the UK scene.

I had a good look at the funding system and around then (2003) it was becoming more regional. I thought if I could survive in Birmingham – with beautiful studios and real support, I could really invent my own world here. And I’ve had dancers from Korea, Hawaaii, Brazil, people come and work with me. I don’t feel the pressure of a big scene – and I don’t feel lonely, because there’s DanceXchange.

[Later: I just discovered her company did the wonderful Ballet on the Buses one of the highlights of last year's Fierce Festival.]

Expect more coverage of this event over the forthcoming months…

via Audiences Central

Over on Leon Trimble’s Chromatouch blog (which I didn’t know he was running until now – bad Leon) he’s posted a couple of videos related to the Written on the Body work he and Lisa Wetton did for the Thinktank’s Planetarium last year. First up is a documentary made by Julia Griffin:

There’s also a short sample of the work, though bear in mind it’s supposed to be projected onto a massive dome rather than in a 425 pixel square.

Lots more in Leon’s blog related to his work and interests – one to keep tabs on methinks.

Grimley of The Post reports on a good year for the Birmingham Hippodrome which sees them with money in the bank to spend – apparently a rare thing in the theatre business. Their future strategy is also outlined and seems to be heavy on the dance bringing in more international companies to complement the BRB and DanceXchange.

Read the full article.

Audiences Central has a big press release for a new International Dance Festival taking place in Birmingham between 28 April and 24 May 2008.

It will bring outstanding dance from across the globe, showcasing the work of world-renowned dance companies including Kirov Ballet and Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, alongside specially choreographed commissions and large-scale participatory and site-specific performances. Akram Khan MBE presents his new collaboration with National Ballet of China, bahok, as one of the Festival highlights.

Featuring some of the world’s greatest choreographers, International Dance Festival Birmingham promises to engage established audiences and newcomers alike through the sheer diversity of its programme.

With host venues scattered across the city centre from The Birmingham REP and Town Hall, to Birmingham Hippodrome and IKON Gallery’s Eastside venue, there will be lots of opportunities to see and participate in dance activities. The Festival will also take over outdoor locations in the City Centre and shop windows in the stylish retail heart of the City, really bringing dance to the people!

The Emocion Flamenco festival starts tonight with “three nights of world-class flamenco at Birmingham Town Hall”. Organised by Rich Hadley and Ana Garcia who have been pushing the flamenco agenda in this city with great passion.

The highlight, as I understand it, is the Saturday performance by Los Arrieritos of 13 Rosas, a much celebrated piece that’s seeing it’s UK premier in Birmingham.

An unforgettable experience and an artistic highlight of 2007, 13 Rosas is a thrilling flamenco dance performance portraying the lives of thirteen women fighting for freedom, fighting for their lives.

Spain’s respected El Mundo newspaper said: “The way they have distilled with such simplicity both the reality of the situation and the emotional state is extraordinary.”

With Birmingham their only UK date, 13 Rosas is a compelling dance and music drama which touches the heart and fires the imagination, an inspiring story from the tragic Spanish Civil War.

Los Arrieritos features a company of flamenco and contemporary dance soloists, musicians and top production team – a combination that has just won two prestigious “Max” awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Olivier Awards) for best choreography and best dance performance of the year.

Audiences and critics throughout Spain have been raving about Los Arrieritos and this, their most powerful show to date. Unmissable.

Rich phoned me recently to really hammer home what a big deal getting them over here is and I reckon I believe him, so if you fancy something that’ll set your pants and brains on fire this Saturday you’d be advised to be at the Town Hall.

Ticket details here.

Congrats to the Birmingham Royal Ballet who won the Outstanding Achievement In Dance Award from the Theartical Management Association for their Stravinksy! season earlier in the year. More info and quotes at The Stirrer.

Rich Batsford blogs about the Written on the Body preview last night of Leon Trimble and Lisa Wetton’s Planetarium-specific art film.

It was a quite wonderful thing, playing both with the format and the technology. I was particularly impressed with Leon’s array of six CCTV cameras (five around, one up) which the dancers performed over, stiched together into a moving combination of David Hockney’s Joiners and the Sistine Chapel. It was also notable that this is, aparently, only the second non-space film to be made specifically for a planetarium, thanks to developments in digital technology, and that Leon and Lisa’s research will prove invaluable in the development of the medium.

While looking up and trying to see the whole thing it occurred to me that one of the barriers to this becoming an accepted art form is the predilection arty-types have for narrow spectacles. You really need massive Deirdre Barlow-style ones to take it all in.