Future Dances
Our Future Dances project is about developing emerging and mid-career dance artists in Devon and providing a comprehensive structure of co-ordinated input to support new choreographic work.
Working with our partners in Devon and beyond the project offers high quality input and robust support structures for developing new dance work with a digital focus.
The project provides exceptional opportunities for young people to access the very best in dance and technology from nationally recognized choreographers to inspire them to engage more deeply and over the longer term in dance and technology.
Future Dances also supports new dance work and young dancers by making the most of our established relationships with companies, venues and other partners.
The Future Dances project is made up of multiple strands of activity, including:
- Bursaries for Devon based artists to develop a new or existing piece of choreographic work which is digitally inspired and tech-led
- Bursary to support a Devon based artist to to take part in the Open Online Theatre programme with IJAD Dance Company
- A digital dance gathering, curated by Dance in Devon with contributions from artists who have been supported as part of the project
- Space to Play – subsidised studio space offer to choreographers who received digital bursraies to trial new work, experiment and explore their new choreographies
- Watch this Space – our well established bi-annual platform of new work by SW choreographers producing high quality, sustainable work
The Future Dances project is supported by funding from Arts Council England.
Dance Artists Charlotte Eaton and Heather Richmond have been awarded bursaries to spark new digitally inspired dance work. We called out for artists or companies at any stage of their career and who were focusing on any genre of dance, including interdisciplinary art forms.
We are also pleased to be supporting local, Devon based Dance Artist, Daisy Harrison, through providing a bursary place to take part in the Open Online Theatre programme with IJAD Dance Company in Autumn 2020.
Twitter: @theatre_open
Instagram: @openonlinehteatre
We are pleased to be working with Dartington Arts, The Plough Arts Centre and Exeter Phoenix to also be offering Charlotte, Heather and Daisy 5 days of Space to Play studio time, in kind, to explore and experiment with digital approaches to creating their work.
IJAD Dance launched Open Online Theatre after spending lockdown exploring how to reset and re-imagine the future of the performing arts. In particular, they’ve been seeking ways to help performing artists create excellent work for live-streaming. By talking with artists, venues and programmers, they have reaffirmed that artists need space, tools and time to explore and develop their practice for live online audiences.
That’s where Open Online Theatre comes in. OOT is a specialised platform for the performing arts, offering artists training in how to create work specifically for online audiences and monetise the process. IJAD’s agile technology created OOT to provide a different dimension to the world of theatres, offering an exciting lifeline to artists and venues by connecting them to global audiences.
The programme combines creative online laboratories with bespoke mentoring in sensography, choreography, co-creation, video production and business, as well as performance opportunities to live-stream their work interactively. Led by five creative practitioners and facilitators in online performance with many years of experience, the programme runs between September and November 2020.
Over 12 weeks, the OOT Artists will have the chance to develop their work on the OOT platform, co-creating a performance with online audiences ahead of the OOT Festival at the end of November.
“I was drawn to this programme as I have an interest in creating live immersive dance work. The opportunity to further develop my creative practice whilst learning more about how I could place the audience inside the work through the use of camera was really exciting to me.
I’m hoping to gain knowledge in creating work for an online platform, specifically how to ‘choreograph’ the camera as much as choreograph dance. I’m looking forward to connecting with other artists from across the UK that have similar interests, but different creative practices, and learn from each other throughout the process.
I’m very grateful that Dance in Devon are supporting my place on this programme, which is especially beneficial at this point in my career, while I begin to focus more on directing outside of performing in the work I create, and is now even more relevant with the changing times.”
Latest updates
We are pleased to commission Ben Dunks and Dartington Making Company to create a tech inspired/digital work or works with Dartington Making Company as part of our Future Dances project.
The outcomes of this commission will be shared at a digital gathering event, date TBC.
Latest updates
To get in touch regarding the Future Dances project please email info@danceindevon.org.uk