‘We’re turning city into a global dance destination’
BIRMINGHAM INTERNATIONAL DANCE FESTIVAL IS BACK WITH SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE, WRITES DIANE PARKES
Our ultimate ambition is to see Birmingham as a dancing city with its public spaces as a dance floor.
BIRMINGHAM International Dance Festival (BIDF) returns with a bang next week with a packed programme of shows in public spaces, venues and online.
Featuring artists from across the globe, local talent and mass participation events, the organisers promise there will be something for everyone from June 17 to July 3.
Produced by Midlands-based FABRIC (formerly known as DanceXchange and Dance4) and presented as part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival, BIDF features nine world premieres and 11 UK premieres from internationally-renowned choreographers.
Lucie Mirkova, head of artistic programmes at FABRIC, says the festival aims to showcase Birmingham as a nationally and internationally recognised dance centre.
“In partnership with other organisations, we are building Birmingham, and the Midlands region as a whole, as a global dance destination. Our ultimate ambition is to see Birmingham as a dancing city with its public spaces as a dance floor.”
From the audience perspective, Lucie says: “The festival offers meaningful theatre, outdoor and digital experiences with an intersection between the local and global. And our ambition is that everyone sees dance as part of their cultural life.”
The opening weekend, ‘Birmingham is a Dance Floor’, from June 17-19, invites audiences of all backgrounds and abilities to join in.
BIDF takes over the city centre with events including folk dancing, mass participation tap, a silent disco party and performances by a host of artists including Foco alAire from Mexico and Cie Dyptik from France.
This weekend also sees an original commission by Critical Mass, an inclusive project bringing young people of all abilities together.
The weekend of June 24-26 features ‘Dance Round the World’ as the city centre hosts a packed line-up of the best international and UK outdoor dance.
The programme includes a performance inside a seven-metre-high rotating hourglass in Victoria Square, three inflatable hippos from Spain hopping across Centenary Square, and KRE8! – an experimental dance battle.
Audiences can also look forward to some quiet contemplation in the City Gar
den with a welcoming dance ceremony by regional company AVA Dance Company and b.solomon/Electric Moose from Canada.
The final weekend, July 2-3, is at Hands
worth Park and includes a programme of interactive workshops, live music and performances by Birmingham-based Sonia Sabri Company, two new hip hop commissions in collaboration with Punch Records and Gallery 37, and thought-provoking Black Victorians by Jeanefer JeanCharles, plus loads more.
Venues taking part this year include Birmingham Hippodrome, which hosts Birmingham Royal Ballet, Out Innerspace
Dance Theatre from Canada and locallybased Humanhood on the main stage.
The theatre’s Patrick Studio features performances from artists Mavin Khoo and Akshay Sharma from the UK, Canadian-Swedish creative alliance Tentacle Tribe and France-based Compagnie Kadidi led by choreographer Dorothée Munyaneza.
“The programme has been influenced by the Commonwealth Games taking place in Birmingham this summer and we
will be working with artists from Commonwealth territories,” explains Lucie. “We are exploring themes of identity, home from home, the diaspora journeys, and its impact on creative practice.”
The festival is increasingly also about exploring and promoting Midlandsbased artists and participants.
“A massive part of what we do now is celebrating home-grown talent, communities and dance artists here in the Midlands on a global stage. That’s one of the things we are really passionate about growing into the future,” says FABRIC head of learning and participation Alex Henwood.
“Through some of the community events including Critical Mass and Tappin’ In we will be putting more than 450 individuals on a global stage to participate in community activity. A lot of these projects are embedded across the West Midlands and it’s about giving them an international spotlight.”
The participation strand aims to encourage people from all walks of life to give dance a go.
“One of the ideas is that there’s something for everybody, dance is for everyone in the broadest sense, whether that be from big international artists who do it as a career to someone who just likes to dance and come along and have a good time,” Alex explains.
“That is reflective in the programme – it doesn’t matter who you are, what your background is or how much dance experience you’ve got, we’re 100 per cent confident there will be something for you and that it will be of the highest quality.
‘‘It’s offering people new experiences, things they’ve not had the chance to do before.”
Alex explains this ethos is exemplified with Critical Mass, in which 40 per cent of the young dancers identify as having a disability or significant access needs.
“Critical Mass will open BIDF and set the tone for what you can expect to see throughout the festival. It shows that dance is genuinely for everybody and what people can expect to see – a genuine representation of society as it is.”
And after two years in which BIDF has had to adapt to Covid restrictions, the team are looking forward to taking over the city again.
“This is the first proper full length live edition of the festival since Covid,” says Alex. “It’s exciting to be back to full potential to what this festival is. We’ve had different iterations in which we’ve been really responsive but now we’ve combined who we are with all of our learning and we are back with a bang and that’s really exciting.”