First Look: works in progress for Dancin’ Oxford Festival, Pegasus Theatre Friday 20th January 2023

First Look provides a chance to get a preview of new dance work being created for Moving with the Times, the annual co-commission by Dancin’ Oxford and Pegasus Theatre for the Spring Dancin’ Oxford Festival. Four exciting dance artists/companies are interested in hearing your feedback on their works-in-progress. Expect to see Bharatnatyam dance, experimental music, drag, clowning, light displays, and hip hop fusion, telling powerful stories of identity. The final pieces will be presented on 3rd-4th March 2023.

This year our four featured artists/companies are Divija Melally, the fuse collective, Vita Peach and CTC Dance Company:

Divija Melally graduated from Bath Spa University, UK, with BA (Hons) Dance, and is trained in contemporary and Bharatnatyam dance. She is also a graduate of the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bangalore, India. She has performed with leading dance companies across Europe and in India. For her Moving With The Times commission, Divija will create a dance work based around her own experiences of intergenerational trauma.

The fuse collective is an interdisciplinary collective made up of early career artists including Trinity Laban graduate and disabled dance artist  Lucy Clark, visual artists Daniela Zaharieva and Yi Ting Liong, and experimental musician, Philip Kinshuck. For the Moving With The Times commission, the fuse collective plans to create an immersive, interactive piece fusing dance, art and light to communicate what it is like to live with a hidden disability.

Oxford’s own Vita Peach is a graduate from Middlesex University (BA Dance Studies, First Class). Vita is an actor, a burlesque dancer and a drag king. For her Moving With The Times commission, Vita plans to create a humorous work drawing on techniques from contemporary dance, acrobatics, theatre, burlesque, butoh, jazz and clowning to create HUGO, a piece of movement theatre about a man who goes through a very extreme transition.

Christopher Tendai founded CTC Dance Company in 2017. Christopher started his career as a dancer on the West End and performed in many West End musicals including Hamilton, West Side Story and Cabaret. CTC Dance Company creates innovative dance productions on topics including mental health awareness and gender diversity. For the Moving With The Times commission, CTC Dance Company will create a piece exploring the relationship between a cis man and a trans woman.

Date: Friday 20th January 7.00pm

Venue: Pegasus Theatre, Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RE

Booking: Tickets are “Pay what you can” (suggested donation £5): book online here

 

Infinite Ways Home, Richard Chappell Dance, Oxford Playhouse 14th March 2022 – Maggie Watson reviews

Richard Chappell’s work Infinite Ways Home opens with five dancers grouped upstage right in a partial darkness that is pieced by beams of light.  On a day when the news was filled with terrible accounts of the citizens of Mariupol sheltering in basements, this felt like a cave, in which people awaited salvation from the world above.

The creative team, led by choreographer Richard Chappell, have drawn on ideas of community and ritual, finding links between the Druids’ ancient connections with the natural landscape and the collective experience of rave culture.  The work follows the arc of a trip, as dancers and audience share an intense multi-sensory experience.  Towards the end, violinist Enyuan Khong comes on stage, raising the intensity of the sound to a level that feels almost unbearable.  At the after-show discussion, led by Miranda Laurence, Chappell described how he had worked remotely with composers Matthew Allmark and Kai Hellstrom (collectively known as Larch) during the first lockdown, as they developed the pulsating electronic score.  Remarkably, the superb lighting design by Joshua Harriette, which felt intrinsic to the production, was created afterwards.

Chappell’s collaborative process fully involves the dancers (he generously acknowledged previous dancers on the programme sheet) and he ran an exciting workshop the following day at the United Reformed Church Hall in Oxford for advanced and professional performers.  His choreography involves strong, supple and sensual movements with full use of the entire body to shift smoothly between upright positions and the floor with energy and dynamism.  Although he has to work with free-lance dancers, they all take company class together and their performance showed a powerful sense of shared purpose and commitment.  Looking around the auditorium, it was clear that Chappell’s work reaches audiences that might not ordinarily attend dance works, and at the end dancers Fay Stoeser, Iris Borras, Edd Arnold, Imogen Alvares, and Theo Arran received wild and enthusiastic applause.

Like Chhaya Collective, which appeared at The Mill Arts Centre Banbury the previous week, Richard Chappell Dance is based in the West Country:  we owe a big ‘thank you’ to the Dancin’ Oxford Festival for helping to bring these companies to Oxfordshire.

Maggie Watson

20th March 2022

 

Dance & Academia presents What is Dance without an Audience? Seminar & discussion Oxford Town Hall 1st November 2018

Dance and Academia presents another thought-provoking seminar in its current series, which continues the theme What is Dance without an Audience?, following three seminars in 2017/18 exploring diverse perspectives from the dance world and beyond.  Convened by dance dramaturg Miranda Laurence, this evening includes presentations by Cathy Seago (University of Winchester) and Lizzie Sykes (University of Bournemouth), and by Lise Smith:

A Somatic Lens

Lizzie Sykes (screen-based artist) and Cathy Seago (dance artist) have been working collaboratively to generate work by asking somatic and filmic questions about content and presentation. We are exploring the nature, impact and materiality of the ‘screen’ and the ‘lens’ in mediating emergent work that has potentially live and digitised elements. Responding organically to site and place via a somatic and kinetic focus we have questioned the spectator’s role and impact on the work at different stages – be they live, mobile, choice-making, unsuspecting, distanced, imagined, and/or literate in particular codes. This presentation will share some of the questions, processes and findings about presence, perspective and environment for dance/ film audiences.

The Critic as Audience Member: reflecting on the role of the reviewer

We often think about the relationship between a Theatre reviewer and the artist reviewed or the work presented. But what about the critic as audience member? How does a critic’s place in the audience reflect and impact in their experience of a performance? How do they speak for, to and on behalf of the watching audience? And why does it sometimes feel like the reviewer and the rest of the audience have just watched two completely different works? Dr Lise Smith (often a reviewer, frequently an audience member, mostly a producer and sometimes a performer) opens these and other questions to discussion.

Date:  Thursday 1st November 2018, 6-8pm
Venue:  St Aldate’s Room, Town Hall, St Aldate’s, Oxford OX1 1BX
Tickets: £6 (pay cash on the door – please bring exact money if possible)
Reserve a place by emailing miranda@mirandalaurence.co.uk. Places are limited.

Dance & Academia: Moving the Boundaries is an Oxford-based project set up in 2007 and run by dance dramaturg Miranda Laurence. The project aims to facilitate dialogue between practitioners, academics in any field, and lay people, who have an interest in any aspect of dance or movement.
Oxford is a city with a rich academic heritage and is also host to a strong community of professional dance practitioners. Dance & Academia aims to be a genuinely interdisciplinary platform where intersections between research and practice in dance can be explored. The group welcomes everyone regardless of background, and intends to be an egalitarian space respecting and exchanging all kinds of different ways of knowing.
More information available here.

Dance & Academia is supported by Dancin’ Oxford festival.

 

Dancin’ Oxford presents Family Dance Week 6th-14th October 2018

This Autumn Dancin’ Oxford is celebrating all things ‘family’ with the return of its popular Family Dance Week. Between 6th – 14th October Dancin’ Oxford will be offering some fantastic opportunities for families (including every generation!) to enjoy dancing together. From exciting performances in theatres and libraries, to family disco events and even a ceilidh, there will be guaranteed fun for the whole family!  Here is a list of upcoming performances by Wriggle Dance Theatre, Dancing Strong, 201 Dance and Alexander Whitley Dance Company, but you can find the full programme including all participatory activities here…

 

Global Dance Stage, Cowley Carnival, 1st July 2018

Join the happy crowds at Cowley Carnival’s Global Dance Stage at Manzil Gardens which will be showcasing some of the huge variety of dance activity Oxford has to offer, featuring performances by schools, youth and community groups and companies.

The companies, in order of appearance are: Headington Dance School Dance Scholars, Yuka Kodama Ballet Group, Identity Youth Dance Project, Stagecoach Abingdon Dance Troupe, Dancemania Senior Performance Group, Deddington Youth Dance Co (Juniors),  Implexa Dance Company, Dance with Sinjini, Bollywood Masterclass, Mini Professionals Dance Academy, Attitude Dance School, Ashnah, The M Word Dancers,  Strawberry Fayre Majorettes, Afrofusion, African Dance Masterclass, Messy Jam Dance Company, União da Mocidade Samba, Mims Bellydance, Al Amari Dabke Dances and Sol Samba.

Presented by Dancin’ Oxford

Date:  July 1, 2018, 12pm – 5pm

Venue: Grounds of Asian Cultural Centre, Manzil Way, off Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1GE

Free and suitable for all ages

More information about Cowley Carnival can be found here

 

Dancin’ on the Green: Dancin’ Oxford Summer Festival, Gloucester Green 15th July 2017

Join Dancin’ Oxford for a fabulous summer afternoon of performances on the Dance Stage in Gloucester Green.  The varied programme includes national professional companies James Wilton Dance (who performed Leviathan to a sell-out audience at Pegasus this March), Company Chameleon, Sole Rebel Tap and C-12 Dance Theatre, plus the ever popular Grannny Turismo (who are bringing their revved-up shopping trolleys back to the streets of Oxford!) plus talented local street dance crews Beat Street and Step2Dance.  It’s free, it’s exciting, it’s awesome, it’s the very best in dance to the heart of the City! All afternoon there will be much to see and enjoy (including a mass Zumba workout!).

Stay for 10 minutes, for an hour or all afternoon. See below for a schedule of performing groups.  Bring the family, a picnic or choose from the many street food stalls on site selling food from around the globe. Fun for everyone, and best of all its free!

Date:  Saturday 15th July, 12.00-4.00pm

Location:  Gloucester Green Market Square, Oxford OX1 2BU

Dancin’ On The Green features:

James Wilton Dance – Leviathan
A 25 minute performance of the sell-out show seen at Pegasus in February, Leviathan will leave you gasping for air under the sheer ferocity of movement. A cast of 7 will wow you with a blend of athletic dance, martial arts, capoeira and partner-work, accompanied by a powerful electro-rock soundtrack by Lunatic Soul! Follow Captain Ahab and the crew as they search for the great white whale Moby Dick…you won’t regret it

Company Chameleon – Push
Athletic yet sensitive, Push is a beautiful yet powerful and engaging male duet, which looks at the different stances we take as relate to one another. The piece looks at how we push to exert dominance and control, and at other times choose to submit and step back
Choreographed by Anthony Missen and Kevin Edward Turner, aka Company Chameleon.
Co-commissioned by Without Walls and Dance Initiative Greater Manchester

Sole Rebel Tap – Spatterdash
An energetic and colourful tap show to an electro-swing soundtrack created especially by The Chicken Brothers. Sole Rebel Tap’s glamorous dancers tear up the stage with spats, fishnets and tailed jackets dancing to well- known music, creating an uplifting and popular show which will appeal to all ages.

Plus, don’t miss some of the best Urban Dance crews Oxford has to offer, including Beat Street and Step2Dance

C-12 Dance Theatre return to Oxford with Secret Encounters – A series of short dance pieces, choreographed by exciting, diverse and award winning choreographers that will pop up unexpectedly. Inspired by “First encounters that last forever”, the pieces will transform outdoor spaces into a live performance for a brief moment. The times will be secret, the locations will be secret…… Catch them if you can! CLICK TO WATCH TRAILER

Dancin’ on the Green is supported by Oxford Playhouse

12.15 – 12.35pm – Music (DJ Set)

12.35 – 12.40pm – Beat Street (street dance)

12.40 – 12.50pm – Sole Rebel Tap – ‘Spatterdash’

12.50 – 1.10pm – Company Chameleon – ‘Push’

1.10 – 1.15pm – Step2 Dance (street dance)

1.15 – 1.40pm – James Wilton Dance – ‘Leviathan’

1.40 – 1.50pm – Sole Rebel Tap – ‘Spatterdash’

1.50 – 2.05pm – Granny Turismo (On the Green)

2.05 – 2.10pm – Compere

2.10 – 3.00pm – Zumba ‘Summer Jam’ (with George Martini & team)

3.00 – 3.05pm – Beat Street (street dance)

3.05 – 3.25pm – Company Chameleon – ‘Push’

3.25 – 3.30pm – Step2 Dance (street dance)

3.30 – 3.55pm – James Wilton Dance– ‘Leviathan’Dancin’ on the Green

 

Duet Squared and more… Joëlle Pappas Projects, Old Fire Station Friday 4th March 2016 – Marcella Vigneri reviews

Enchantment, joyfulness, playfulness; hypnotic and powerfully evocative. These are the words that come to mind after coming out of Joëlle Pappas’ wonderfully assorted dance programme of works old and new Duet Squared (and more) at the Old Fire Station last Friday, 4^th March.

The evening consisted of 5 pieces, with as a prelude the short film Buried Memories from 2004 in which dancer Galina Kalicin danced a trail inspired by stones, bricks and steps through Brookes University’s Harcourt Hill campus on a sunny afternoon.   Tales without Words, set to Satie’s mysterious Trois morceaux en Forme de Poire played live by pianists Diana Hinds and Elizabeth Kreager, was a storming in of 31 young dancers onto the stage, drawing beautiful free lines across the space, some more evocative of a ‘togetherness ensemble’ than others, all accentuating an enchaînement of body movement. Joëlle’s unique ability to bring together young dancers – even those not yet technically sophisticated, but all invariably conveying a real feel of dancing joyfulness from within – never ceases to surprise me.

 

Dancin’ Oxford and Crossover Dance Projects presents TRA^VERSE at Oxford Castle Quarter 30th May-2nd June

Following on from the fantastic success of last year’s event, Dancin’ Oxford will once again take over the grounds of one of Oxford’s oldest sites this summer and bring it alive with dance and music. A large cast of professional and community performers from Oxford and Japan will take you on a journey around, and through, the spaces of Oxford Castle.

Devised and directed by local choreographer Cecilia Macfarlane, site specific work TRA^VERSE: Under Riding, Over Arching, with 150 dancers of all ages performing each night with live musicians, explores the bridges that we make between cultures and between art forms.

 

Moving with the Times: CD of music for dance by Malcolm Atkins – Bruno Guastalla reviews

Malcolm Atkins has a long experience of collaborative projects with dancers; his dynamic work with Cafe Reason, Ana Barbour and Susie Crow  to name a few, has helped to shape in Oxford a culture of collaboration where the joint creation of dance and music with all its birthing pains is cherished, and thankfully even preferred by some dancers to the outsourcing of music-as-a-commodity.  This CD is a testimony to a lively contemporary dance scene, confident and brave enough to trust and commission new music.

The fifteen pieces on the album were written and realised in the past couple of years for performances by dancers/choreographers Ségolène Tarte (Triple-Entendre), Anuradha Chaturvedi, and Ana Barbour (My Time, Inertia) as part of the Dancin’ Oxford local dance artists’ platform, Moving with the Times, at the Pegasus Theatre.

 

Moving with the Times, Pegasus Theatre, Friday 1st March 2013 – Lizzy Spight reviews

Having seen commissioned works in progress at Scratch Night in January, Lizzy Spight returned to see the finished pieces in Moving with the Times, the annual showcase for works by Oxfordshire based dance artists.  Here are her responses to them…

STONE’S THROW – AnaMorphic Dance Theatre

On stage two musicians in the back left corner, with horn and keyboard; pebbles spread all over the stage, on a big screen two children walking through a green landscape, eating sandwiches and leaving markers on the ground.  A man and a woman enter; they dance, talk, share childhood experiences and sandwiches, play with “markers”/ pebbles on the ground, run along pebble paths.