So we are on the last week of this year's fabulous festival, and its been an amazing two weeks! I have seen two world premieres, a world first preview, a UK first and a host of other events. Not bad for my first Nottdance I think, plus add to that I am helping run it..
I came into the Dance4 team with a limited knowledge of what the whole thing was about, all i really knew was that we have some cool posters round the office from previous years.
But that all changed pretty quickly.
I was thrown into the deep end! Given some artists and told that I was the food guy, luckily for everyone I wasn't going to be cooking every night but it is always a last resort…
I was first handed Me and the Machine; two lovely artists, Sam Pearson and Clara Garcia Fraile, based in Brighton, who were so nice! They just took everything as it came to them and got on with it, which is great when trying to do a load of other stuff as well (like now I'm doing three other things at the same time).
So far their "When We Meet Again" has been my favourite piece of the festival, it was just a magical experience, a 1 on 1 performance where you are immersed into a new world and a new person, it created a lovely amount of positive feedback and a question you have to ask anyone else who had seen it about a strawberry. I will say no more..
The first weekend was a packed one for me, I had Friday and Saturday with Me and the Machine at the PlayHouse with When We Meet Again and then Sunday at the Dance4 studio with their work in progress "On Ways To Disappear without Leaving a Trace" which included a rather handsome Dance4 employee. (No David it wasn't you). Add to this we decided to show Sam the eventful nightlife in Nottingham on the Friday night and then I wasn't to sure how to get back to the office or the Playhouse in the morning as I had ended up staying the night with some of the Dance4 team who decided to lay in all morning! and leave me to walk miles and miles and miles… to a bus stop down the road, where yet again I met a nice old man (a different one to the guy at Episodes) who told me where i needed to go.
Skipping forward a few days now, I have seen the World Premier Premier preview night performance (or whatever it was known as) Glorious by Rajni Shah and now I am about to see a double bill at Lakeside. It's Matthias Sperling and Rachel Krische performing a world premier of their Superdance project and Coisceim Dance Theatre with Swimming with my Mother.
It kicked off with Matthias and Rachel bouncing onto the stage in a lycra costume representing a superhero, however they forgot the first rule of superhero costume design; as the Incredibles has told us all: No capes! We all know that they either get you sucked into a vortex or get them snagged on a missile fin. You can tell what we all talked about in the interval! The piece was a mixture of laughs and a serious competition to outdo the other dancer. I felt the best part of this piece was when they were listening to music through head phones and portrayed it through their movements and timings, a great idea which I would love to have a go at sometime soon..
Coisceim was a moving piece about a Mother and her relation to swimming and how it had shaped her life. I personally enjoyed the movement qualities of this piece and loved the simple ideas used to create a heart warming dance piece where David played both himself old and young and his father.
The World Premier of Tom Dale's I Infinite to me was a wonderful experience and the performance was great. Maria did a great job with Tom's choreography and to get the timing right with Barret Hodgson's lighting and sound which were both very impressive. I can't really say what I enjoyed most, the whole piece was a spectacle not to be missed if you get a chance to see, but the movement and performance by Maria made me want to ditch my cape and join in in the futuristic world. The lighting and use of haze made a beautiful image of clouds forming and moving around the lights and creating an image that has stuck in my mind since; yes it was that beautiful, at the time i found myself stood in awe.. just watching and wanting more. And finally a section where you could get up close to the action, Maria reacting to a tilting image on the floor and matching its every move, I could of quite happily stood and watched her play with that for an entire performance.
Ali Fekih is an amazing man! Seeing his show on the Saturday night was an experience as I had no idea what I was going to see, a thought shared by many I think. I saw a mad collection of movement, use of simple objects and sound timed to perfection, he is a little bit of a perfectionist from my time with him. This continued onto Sunday at our Street Martial event at Broadmarsh. We had a collection of great young groups, Leicester Parkour wowed the crowed with some amazing moves and many backflips off horses (gymnastic ones that is), Fresh 101 with their beat boxing and comedic street moves, Cordão de Ouro Capoeira Nottingham with their use of live music and singing and a show of basic to advanced Capoeira which showed incredible body control by all, Ali Fekih returning to his roots as a street performer and creating a sense of story time for us all their with more great body control and a little bit of showing off with his handstand press ups to warm up! and not to forget the Spirit Dance! which brought the crowd onto the stage to do the new dance to help promote the Spirit Campaign. Ali also helped us pack up which was nice but was mainly to show us up as he was a master of rolling dance floor and we were, well lets just say pretty bad.
And here I arrive to today, our little break before the final week, a chance to catch up on office work and for me to share a little insight. I haven't mentioned the craziness which is going on but im sure you can imagine what i said about episodes and times it by three weeks! Yet I'm still sane (I tell myself this on a regular basis) and loving the Festival and the sense of achievement after every show.
Be sure to come along to our final performances and see some impressive work by some of the best Choreographers from around Europe and even more UK Premiers!
I'm sure you lucky people will get another blog soon so keep your eyes peeled.
Ben Eagles
Events and Promotion Trainee, Dancer, Worlds Best Backstage Runner! (I feel..) Chef of the Year, IT Extraordinaire and Cookie Monster (Radojka thinks I eat to many…)
