A diverse range of arts venues and organisations across Wales have joined forces to provide the country’s first dance platform for professional artists to showcase their work.Wales Dance Platform will take place in the first weekend of July, giving both artists and audiences the chance to be see all manner of events from embryonic ideas to fully-created works. The Platform will also include professionals who are not dancers or choreographers but who are also part of the creative process. So, for example, there will be the opportunities for dance writers and critics, photographers, video artists, film makers, designers, musicians and other visual artist to share their work and experience of dance in Wales. The Festival will be hosted by Cardiff's leading theatres and organisations, led by National Dance Company Wales, including Chapter Arts Centre, Wales Millennium Centre and the Dance House at WMC, home of NDCWales. It is also being supported by arts and media organisations including Welsh National Opera, Creu Cymru Dance Consortium, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Sherman Theatre and Dawns y Bawb. Wales’ leading professional dancers, choreographers, artists and writers are also signed up. With the sub title, 'Trust me I'm an Artist', the Platform's format has been conceived as a direct way of engaging artists, the public and critics in a thoughtful and fascinating weekend of performance, film, talks and seminars. Some of Wales leading artists and arts writers are also signed up. While hosted in the Capital, to bring a flavour of all-Wales to the Platform, many of the regional theatres of Wales have offered to 'buddy' up with local professional dance-artists and help them produce new work and bring it to Cardiff. Artists are also being encouraged to think about space in a new way and to devise work that makes best use of the resources and theatre environments that are available that include NDCWales’ studio, the Blue Room at the Dance House; the Weston Studio and Glanfa at Wales Millennium Centre and Chapter Arts Centre's theatre and studio space. The organisers also believe the Platform should bring Cardiff up-to-date with many of the new developments for contemporary dance in mainland Europe where short, sharp festivals of this kind are commonplace across most capital cities, but are yet to establish a foothold in the UK. What also makes this Platform unique is the open policy, inviting all dance-artists working in Wales to take part, not just a selected few filtered through a critical or curatorial eye. This means that audiences can get to see dance in the raw and can then either vote with their feet, or use word of mouth to spread the news about what they are seeing. For choreographers it means they have had the chance to be “out there” and be seen on an equal basis with all the other work on the Platform. As all ticket money will go directly to the artists, the challenge for them is to get out there and make a noise about the great work they are making and attract an audience to their shows. Inspiration for the Platform came after Roy Campbell-Moore, artistic associate of NDCWales, visited similar dance platforms in Prague in the Czech Republic and Ljubljana in Slovenia last year and saw the impact that they were having in those countries and how they were helping to bring both new and established artists to wider public attention. Started as a means of supporting choreographers who were struggling in difficult financial circumstances, these European platforms have become one of the best ways of seeing new work all concentrated in a short period of time. The platforms also give choreographers and dancers a chance to see what others are doing in the art form and what challenges others are facing in the creative process. The Wales Dance Platform also builds on other recent programmes of new work including the Meet the Artist, See the Art season at NDCWales, Chapter's Experimentica and the WMC’s Incubator seasons. These have shown how audiences enjoy seeing new work and being able to share their views and thoughts with the artists after performances. "I'm really looking forward to seeing so many different Wales-based choreographers presenting their creations over one weekend and for me, the rawer the better and I'm hoping to be surprised, stimulated and perplexed from experiencing so many different things on the Platform,” said Mr Campbell-Moore. “At every event, there will also be a chance for the audiences to engage with the work and have the chance to say what they think and comment on the work. "The other great thing about the Platform is the support it's gaining already from all over Wales. For instance, many theatres in Wales are members of the Dance Buddy scheme where they partner up with local professional choreographers to help them to develop their work and enable new ideas to sprout in what can be a terribly difficult financial for dance-artists. The hope they are expressing to the Platform is that together, they will be able to create work especially for the Platform and with the help of the theatre, bring that work to Cardiff to show." "I'm especially delighted that the venues across Cardiff have agreed to sponsor the Platform as an annual event which should give it the chance to grow and develop into an established part of the Wales dance calendar and eventually begin to attract audiences from across Europe as well. "For artists anywhere in Wales, this is a great chance to get involved with the Platform and raise their own profile, make their work more visible, develop a following for their work in a safe and supportive environment and, of course, meet other people committed to dance creativity." If you are a creative professional artist, venue or organisation in Wales involved in dance and would like information or register your interest contact Nia Sian Jones at nia.sian@ndcwales.co.uk or mike@mediasmith.co.uk |
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| Nia Sian Jones e-mail: nia.sian@ndcwales.co.uk |
Sunday, January 2, 2011 |
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