nottdance
nottdance is our annual international festival of experimental dance and performance.
Click here to visit nottdance08 pages and the full festival programme.
Taking place from 17 – 26 October, nottdance08 explored the concept of choice. It was Dance4’s former director Nicky Molloy’s last festival following 3 years with us. In bidding farewell, she created an exciting festival that gave us the opportunity to work with audiences, young people and artists in a completely new way.
The audience choice…
On a warm sunny Saturday in March, we welcomed a panel of 9 audience members made up of festival veterans, relative new comers and a couple of complete first timers, to our studio. We receive literally hundreds of DVD’s every year from international artists who would like to present their work in nottdance. We shortlisted 6 pieces of work for the panel to choose from and following an intense day of DVD watching, discussion, deliberation and a lovely lunch – the panel unanimously made their selection…
Kate McIntosh (New Zealand/Brussels), All Natural.
The show played to a packed audience and feedback included…
My mind is blown…That was…just…Wow! I think I love her
I totally loved Kate McIntosh performance, her address, the subtleness of her behaviour, her strong stage presence and sense of humour
Young Peoples choice…
Once again, we threw open our studio doors to a group of 16 – 19 year olds and invited them to select an evenings entertainment from a shortlisted group of 6 DVD’s. Once again an in-depth debate about each piece of work was entered in to and once again, a unanimous decision was eventually achieved resulting in an exciting double bill.
On Tuesday 21 October 2008, in front of a sell out audience at Lakeside Arts Centre Gabriele Reuter (Germany/UK) presented the World Premiere of her show Inventory/(Räumung) followed by the amazing Taldans (Turkey) and Sek Sek.
What else…
As well as our audience and young peoples choices, we invited three artists, Maria La Ribot (Spain), Jonathan Burrows (UK) and Alain Buffard (France), all of who have a long-standing relationship with us, to curate an evening’s performance each.
We ventured out of our home city of Nottingham down to London for the first of a new programme nottdance in London. We welcomed new audiences to come and talk to us about what we do in a series of talks entitled Everything you wanted to know about experimental dance but were afraid to ask, and we encouraged those of you living outside of the county to see the festival through a series of free, chauffer driven coach journeys from Lincoln, Derby and Leicester. We partied at our new festival bar The Mezz at Broadway, and we enjoyed a series of artistic dialogues through a partnership between Springdance (Utrecht) and CNDB (Bucharest).
So, with all that we head back in to our office to reflect, digest, analyse and start working on nottdance09 – our 18th festival of experimental dance and performance.
